My Amazon Free Month - Day 24 - Made It!

I realized that, as I leave for vacation this evening, I'm not going to be back home until August and I cannot think of a reason why I would order something from Amazon while I'm in another state! 

I have learned a LOT from this experiment, not the least is how much I allowed myself to become dependent on Amazon, both as a purchaser and as an author - and sometimes to my own detriment! I found cheaper deals on items better suited to my needs, I was able to easily buy ebooks from places other than Amazon and reward wide authors by making wide purchases, and I honestly feel really good about opening up other avenues of shopping for myself. 

Amazon is not the end all, be all, even though when I started this month it kind of felt that way. 

I think this month has definitely changed how I'm going to be shopping in the future. 

Going forward, hitting up Google's search bar rather than Amazon's is definitely going to be my first step rather than my second when I need something specific. 

I've decided to keep my Kobo. I'm making as many book purchases as I from websites other than Amazon or Walmart, but when it comes down to those two being the options I'll probably go with the Kobo for now, because I want wide authors to know that it's WORTH being wide.

However, I'm definitely keeping my KU subscription. It allows me to discover new authors and read a lot more books than I could actually afford to buy. Even with my reading curtailed by a lack of time, I think it's still worth it to have KU for when I do have time to binge read. I'm a speed reader, so if I have time and the books are short, I can get through multiple in one day =P I am also all about supporting authors in general, including those who are in KU whom I love. The current KU system is rife with scammers and thieves, so I like to try and help the honest KU authors whose books I enjoy get their fair share of the monthly pie. Especially since, honestly, if they all went wide, I would have to make some hard choices about purchases.

My Prime account renewed in May so I have almost a year to decide if I'm going to keep it or not. I'm going to track how often I actually use it - for both packages and video rentals - now that I'm not actually relying on Amazon for everything anymore and see if it's worth renewing in May 2020. I have a suspicion that it will not be, but I want to make sure and obviously I have plenty of time to do so since I paid for the annual subscription back in May. 

So that's my no-Amazon for a month experiment... I'll do another update at the end of August and we'll see how well I've managed to keep up my changes! =P 

Stay Sassy and I hope everyone is having a fab summer!