A Book-Buying Funnel to grow your library and expand your curiosity
A framework to help you find more interesting books
While I wasn’t a complete underachiever at school, I was never completely engaged in learning despite my innate curiosity. For the most part I wasn’t reading the right books, and now learning has become the central obsession of my life. Buying and reading books is the closest thing I have to an addiction. If I have half an hour of leisure time, I’ll probably walk to the nearest bookstore. I can’t walk out of a bookshop empty handed. I owe much of my perspective, philosophy and life direction to the compilation of lessons from my favourite books.
Most people I speak to want to read more books. They don’t fall short of their expectations because they don’t have the time, it’s usually because they don’t spend enough time discovering what’s available and exploring what they’re interested in.
To help you go from discovery to purchase, I’ve created a Book-Buying Funnel (BBF) to guide you to your dream library. The funnel has 4 stages:
Discover > Consider > Purchase > Evaluate
Discover
Discovery should be haphazard. This is the top of your funnel and it should be broadly driven by your curiosity. An article, a reference to a historical event, something interesting that you’ve never heard of, add it straight to your list.
Add any recommendations or anything that sounds interesting to your list. Generously add new suggestions to the list, and review them at the next stage.
If you listen to podcasts where they regularly talk about books they’ve read and recommend, add them straight to your list.
Ask people who are experts on a particular topic what types of books they’d recommend. Trusted friends who read a lot usually have great recommendations.
ChatGPT - Ask ChatGPT what the top books are on a particular topic, or ask it to recommend a range of books from what you’ve previously read and enjoyed.
Consider
Regularly review your list and topics. This is the most important step and where most of the time is required. Consideration requires a delicate balance between prioritising what to read next and not over analysing the purchasing decisions.
There’s an abundance of resources to explore books of interest:
Reviews on Goodreads: Unfortunately for books, a higher volume of reviews doesn’t necessarily lead to better insights. If I ever write a book, I shall fear the wrath of the Goodreads army. It’s comical how in-depth some reviews are, and fascinating how polarising the reviews can be. This is why the standard average rating is insufficient. The quality of reviews on the site hold quite a lot of weight on my purchase decisions for particular books. I’ve reviewed highly rated books that have had one in-depth review that's immediately changed my perspective. I’m usually more intrigued by a polarising book. Note to the Goodreads product team: I would love the ability to customise and sort the review data.
Kindle App: The kindle app/e-reader enables you to see a preview of the first 10%-20% of a book. It’s a great way to explore the beginning of the book before making a decision to purchase.
Library: Your local library may have many of your books available for selection, particularly older books. Most libraries have an online catalogue where you can search and reserve books.
ChatGPT: Is great for comparing books with in-depth analysis to guide your selection. For example, I was going to buy either ‘Thinking in Bets’ or ‘The Success Equation’ for someone and asked ChatGPT to help me decide which one I should select:
If you are looking for a book that covers most of the shared insights in a practical, accessible way and also provides additional practical advice on decision-making, "Thinking in Bets" would be the one to choose. You'd miss out on some of the deeper statistical and theoretical analysis found in "The Success Equation," but you would still gain a solid understanding of how to improve decision-making under uncertainty.
Purchase
Buy the book. This is the best part. I’d love to be able to bottle up the feeling and smell of a fresh book in your hands. New books typically cost between $25-$40. The personal value I put on a book is much closer to $100 (my wife doesn’t necessarily agree).
When in doubt, buy it. The worst case scenario is that you have a timeless decorative feature or a gift for someone else, best case scenario it fundamentally changes your perspective and alters your life direction.
Op shops. Inner city op shops are often a treasure trove of book bargains. I regularly buy books worth over $50 (new) for $2 at second and stores.
Second hand bookstores. I love the vibe of a second hand bookstore, and the staff are often incredibly helpful. They typically have a great range of books between 50%-80% off the original price. A couple of my favourites are ‘Fully Booked’ in Thornbury and ‘Already Read’ in North Fitzroy.
Booko. Great book comparison site to compare prices of a book at a variety of retailers and delivery cost.
Evaluation
Once you’ve read or quit a book, add it to your read list and review it with either just a simple rating system, or making comprehensive notes for the ones you love or learn a lot from.
Rating criteria. A simple 1-10 rating appears to work well for Derek Sivers. In addition to the rating, I have recently added a few more data points to help me remember if I skimmed the book, read end to end, or couldn’t get into it. Putting an approximate date when I read it also heaps contextualise where my knowledge was at the point. For example, the first few business books will be more impactful than the 50th. I’d recommend writing detailed notes from the best non-fiction books you read. I previously published my book notes on 7 Powers, and it significantly improved my understanding on the content.
Can’t be bothered cataloguing your existing library? If you have a lot of physical books, you can take a photo of them (not the whole bookshelf, about 10 at a time) and ask ChatGPT to create a table showing the name of the book and the author. It didn’t always work 100% perfectly but it was enough to save a lot of time.
How to read more books
Quickly quit books
Skip ahead or move on entirely from books that you’re not enjoying or engaged in. A book that you lose interest in that prevents you from reading other things should ve avoided at all costs. Tyler Cowen has strong thoughts on quitting books, via the Tim Ferriss podcast:
People sometimes don’t believe me when I talk about how many books pass through the house. If I’m not traveling, it’s quite ordinary if I go through five or 10 books a day and which parts of them I’ve read, you can debate, maybe it washes out to be reading two or three books a day. Some good nights, you get to read all five books, right?
The important thing is to be ruthless with the books that are not good. Just stop reading, put them down, usually throw them away. Don’t give them away. You could be doing harm to people if you give them away. My philosophy of reading is that no one reads quickly. So someone once asked me, “Well, how long did it take you to read that book?” I said, “57 years. I’m 57 years old.” So the way you read well is just by reading a lot, and by reading a lot your whole life. Then when you go to read actual books, you’re like, “I know that, I know that, I know that.” You keep on going and you read much more quickly. That’s really the way to read a lot. There are these compounding returns to being obsessed with reading and starting young and never stopping.
Strategically utilise gift giving
My brothers and I have a system: a few months before our birthdays, we each share a shortlist of books we'd like to receive. This gives the person buying the gift a chance to pick a book they might not have chosen for themselves and read it before giftng it.
Leave books lying around your house
Seeing them will make of you think of them and randomly pick them up to peruse.
Take a book with you
Anytime you have to take public transport or will be waiting somewhere, have a book handy to start reading. Ryan Holiday suggests reframing the concept of reading:
The key to reading lots of book begins with stop thinking of it as some activity that you do. Reading must become as natural as eating and breathing to you. It’s not something you do because you feel like it, but because it’s a reflex, a default.
Carry a book with you at all times. Every time you get a second, crack it open. Don’t install games on your phone–that’s time you could be reading. When you’re eating, read. When you’re on the train, in the waiting room, at the office–read. It’s work, really important work. Don’t let anyone ever let you feel like it’s not.
Summary
I used to worry that the time needed to read all the books I wanted would exceed my lifespan. Thanks to the book-buying funnel, most of those fears have subsided. In what feels like a short time, I’ve read hundreds of books, I have wide ranging library in my house, and my kids already love reading as much as I do. Committing to consistently reading books is one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.