Let’s Talk Bookish: Digital vs Physical Decluttering

Let’s Talk Bookish is a bookish meme created by Rukky @ Eternity Books in 2019 and co-hosted by Book Nook Bits and Dini @ Dinipandareads, where bloggers write about and discuss all sorts of bookish topics.

Somehow, the prompts for LTB are always really interesting – today’s is no exception! Thank you as always to the wonderful co-hosts who keep LTB going and give us plenty to think and talk about.

Let’s Talk Bookish
Digital vs Physical Decluttering

Prompts: How do you manage your digital library (Kindle, Kobo, etc.)—do you delete books you won’t read, or do you let them pile up? Do you feel less guilty about owning too many digital books versus physical ones? Which is harder to let go of: a well-loved physical book or a purchased e-book?

At one point, I tried to keep my Kindle library sorted by genre. That…went out the window. Mainly because I tend to get ebooks in batches, and they will absolutely sit there for an age before I finally get to them. So, my digital library is a shocking mess. I also found it quite difficult with Kindle’s UI to sort and separate them into folders, so it became a fairly lengthy task! I don’t delete books. I don’t download them straight away, but typically they will remain on my Kindle. I admin, too, I’m also not great at removing them once I have read them! I think mostly because they disappear from my screen – it’s always on ‘unread’ so once they’re complete, well, out of sight, out of mind.

Maybe I should go through and delete the ones I have read, but memory has (so far) never been a problem, and at this point there is years of books on there. As for books “I won’t read”…look, realistically, no, I’m not going to get to them all, but a girl can dream, and I wouldn’t want to delete a book only to then actually want to read it and no longer have access. I do however track my Kindle books. I keep a spreadsheet, with different tabs – ones for NetGalley, arcs from different places, and non-arc books. I also log my physical books here, and I note down genres as well as tropes or other information about the books.

I feel less guilty about owning digital books than physical. I think, again, out of sight out of mind – physical books take up physical space and I definitely have too many taking up too much space! I’m trying to get better at sorting them once I’ve read them, but to be honest digital books will just…sit on my Kindle (there’s a theme here, isn’t there?).

I find it harder to let go of a physical book. There are particular books I will or want to read again, but if I’ve read them in ebook I then want a physical or audiobook to reread, whereas if I originally read it as a physical I may return to the same copy of the book again. Although physical books take up physical space, there’s realistically no limit on space for physical books, whereas with any digital product, taking up space means, eventually, that space will run out. So I do find it easier to just remove or delete a digital book (same goes for audiobooks, too).

As always, I would love to hear your own thoughts on this topic – do you sort through digital books, remove/delete them, do you have any methods for keeping track of them all? Just let me know in the comments or link me to your own LTB post!