Unfortunately, sometimes in life, we find ourselves in a position where we don’t have a lot of money.   The reasons can be many, but the outcome is always the same — you’re skint and you need to cut back on everything, yes, sadly, even those bare essentials like books need to take a trimming on your new and thrifty budget plan.

For a hopeless book addict to find themselves in this situation, life can become rather distraught, to say the least.

But, not to worry, we here at Kindle Worm HQ have spent today’s lunch break (while eating organic vegan food from Waitrose) brainstorming and conceptualising your misery and have worked out, on your poor, sorry ass’s behalf, how to get books on the cheap.   Now all the staff think they should have another lunch break because they class this one as work — really?

So you see, we really do care about you, the helpless, downtrodden and underfunded book addicts of the world.

Here are the 10 ways that we came up with, during lunch break, to get cheap books:

1. Buy a Kindle.   I know, it seems counter intuitive to spend nearly £100 on something to read on, but we’ll get into why that initial investment is worthwhile.

2. Once you have your Kindle, start exploring Victorian literature and other classical books.   You’ll find most of these are now out of copyright and have been put into Kindle format and are available for free.   So go back and explore all the oldies, like Peter Pan, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, The Wizard of Oz, etc..   Reading these books as adults is really interesting.   It’s amazing how different the stories actually are to how we actually remember them.

Of course, as well as the children’s classics, there’s also all the serious Vic Lit for grown ups; just as cheap but not as fun.

3. Sign up to writer’s mailing lists.   A few writers out there give away a free ebook when you sign up for their mailing lists, so check out their websites.   And along with a free initial book for signing up, some writers continue to give away free books several times a year simply for continuing to receive their newsletter and will also let you know when there’s good book reductions going on around the internet.

4. Buy collections.   Mark Twain, Jules Verne and many other collections of these old, but great, writers are usually available for about £1.   You can get a lot of books in this way for every £1 you spend.

5. Open an account at Bookbub.   If all you read is the 99p books offered on Bookbub, you’ll find a year’s worth of literary savings will easily pay off the price of a Kindle Paperwhite, with change to spare.   There’s some great books on offer every day and i’ve found myself reading, and very much enjoying, a lot of books i would never have read otherwise.   Bookbub certainly does encourage a broadening of literary perspectives, and while that’s a super good thing in itself, the fact that you save a lot of money at the same time is super good and doubly awesome.

6. Save all the books you want to read in the future into an Amazon wish list, then set the order to lowest price first and save that as a bookmark in your browser and check it once a day, it’ll instantly throw anything up towards the top of the list that’s been put on sale to a good price.   An Amazon wish list is rather different to Bookbub in that you can decide your purchase limit and chose the exact books you want to keep track on, which is good, but it doesn’t tempt you into broadening your literary perspectives very much like Bookbub does.   Both are great in their own ways, so spoil yourself and use both.

7. The other advantage of using an Amazon wish list is to let friends, family, and everyone you meet in the street, know the URL of your “Amazon Wish List” and tell them to only buy stuff off there as presents for you — smile nicely.   That way, you’ll always get something you really want and they won’t have to spend weeks trying to work out what to get you for your birthday this year — “Every 1’s a winner baby, that’s the truth!”

8. “Kindle Book Deals”. While Bookbub does mention some of these and other deals too, it doesn’t get them all.   So save these as a book mark and check in every day to see what’s looking good to throw on your pile.

9. Find someone with some spare cash who has enabling tendencies and prove to them that you are a committed and serious addict who is looking to adopt and encourage a wealthy-ish enabler — more info on this tactic can be found at the top of “The Pile”.   Remember, before deploying this tactic, that it is considered good procedure when doing so to be fully prepared with an extensive “Amazon Wish List” as you don’t want them thinking that you’re wasting their time.   More importantly though, you do not want to be wasting your own time with this.   You must set out absolutely determined to secure an enabler who will supply you with lots of books that you actually want, not just whatever’s cheap in the charity shop when they happen to be passing.   Never, ever, accept anything less than brand new books that you actually want to read, it is, afterall, a respect thing: you’re a book addict not a scagg-head.

10. Get a sugar person (i do like being politically correct  ) and turn on that charm baby!!!   You know they want to spend money on you in return for certain services, so get them to throw a few books in on top of the clothes, jewellery, Caribbean holidays, beach house and expensive nights out you should already be getting as standard for being a classy whore.   Not judging, just saying.

If you have any more ideas for cheap books then please contact me and i’ll add it to this page.