I use this online price tracker that emails me when there are Amazon sales on ebooks I want. This may seem terribly handy, especially since I can set it to only tell me when there are books that are selling for especially low prices, like $2. Or so I thought years ago when I started using it.

Since then I've learned that sales at Amazon are not always like in bricks and mortar stores, where you had a vague idea about when sales would occur. Oh sure, it's still the major holidays, but it's also long before them and then sometimes a month after them, and suddenly there will be a LOT of emails with "hey there's this thing you want that's on sale, never mind that you just bought X amount of ebooks just yesterday!" Often it won't be just a few ebooks I've been wanting, but masses of them. And then suddenly more later in the week.Then I have to practice some restraint. Or try to.

So I gave in and bought Murder of the Century today - because I could not resist:

1) $2 price - again, the Amazon US store price, sorry everyone out of the US. (Someday I look forward to not having prices vary so much by region and we can reminisce about this as a past annoyance. Meanwhile check local ebook sellers, just in case there's any price matching.)

2) It's media related and I have a thing for journalism history - this deals with the US newspaper press/tabloids of the 1890s. (Yellow Journalism era.)

3) It's true crime. From the blurb on the Amazon page:

"On Long Island, a farmer finds a duck pond turned red with blood. On the Lower East Side, two boys playing at a pier discover a floating human torso wrapped tightly in oilcloth. Blueberry pickers near Harlem stumble upon neatly severed limbs in an overgrown ditch. Clues to a horrifying crime are turning up all over New York, but the police are baffled: There are no witnesses, no motives, no suspects."

4) And I've had it on my wish list since 2012, so yup, this one I bought without even the part where I pretend to pause and assess whether I really want it or not.

And thus endeth today's purchase saga.

Now I'm wondering if this is the warning shot before the sales blast in. At least it's reminding me that I need to sit down and ponder book presents for Christmas - I'll have to write another post about that because I need to get some genre buying ideas.