Amazon Prime Day officially begins at 3 p.m. Eastern Time on Monday, July 16, and lasts for 36 hours—through 3 a.m. Eastern Time, Wednesday, July 18. While Amazon’s been kicking out various special offers for the last week, the big ones are probably reserved for that 36-hour period.

Among others, I’ve heard that the new, non-refurbished Paperwhite will be on sale for a startling $40 off retail, bringing the price down to only $79.99 (or $149.99 for the 3G variant). Also, a refurbished Kindle Oasis can be had for $209.99 through July 18. Amazon’s other readers and Fire tablets will probably be marked down to some extent as well. The refurbished 32 GB Fire HD 10 is marked down to $89.99. Also, Amazon is offering an additional 20% off of its lightly-used Amazon Warehouse products.

If you want to look for those deals, a good place to start would be Amazon’s Prime Day Landing Page, which indexes all available offers for your perusal. Another good place to look is Amazon’s free mobile shopping app, which will offer “sneak peeks” at deals before they actually go live.

Here are some things you might want to consider while you find and buy those deals.

First off, if you haven’t already signed up for Amazon Prime (or, for that matter, Kindle Unlimited, Audible, etc.) it may not be a good idea to sign up for them tomorrow if you’re wanting to take advantage of the 30-day trial offer these plans usually have. That’s because on Prime Day (and Black Friday and Cyber Monday, for that matter), Amazon usually removes the trial periods.

If you’re not a Prime subscriber yet, and Amazon does remove the trial period, the most economical way to take advantage of those deals will be the $12.99 one-month Prime membership—which, depending on how much you buy, and how much those things are marked off, may still be a good deal on balance. Of course, if you know you’re going to be using those plans over the long term and don’t feel the need to drop them after 30 days, that admonition probably doesn’t apply to you.

And even without the 30-day trial, Amazon does have some good offers on its subscription programs for Prime Day. College students can get 50% off a six-month Amazon Prime membership. (Also, qualifying EBT (food stamp) users can get Amazon Prime for $5.99 per month.) Audible is offering 66% off a three-month plan—that’s like getting three months of membership for the price of one. Amazon Music is 99 cents for the first four months. Kindle Unlimited is 99 cents for the first three months.

It’s worth remembering, also, that you shouldn’t be enticed into buying something just because it’s on sale. It’s easy to get in the mindset of wanting to buy some super-cheap thing just because it is super-cheap—but the real question is, do you really need it, and how much would you use it? If you buy some $100 gizmo because it’s marked down to $20 but don’t ever use it, you haven’t saved $80—you’ve wasted $20. You might want to consider making a list of things you’re looking for before you start shopping.

You may also want to consider limiting your purchases by not using Amazon’s patented 1-click purchase option to order things instantly. Instead, use the “add to cart” button so you can total up all your purchases together in your shopping cart before you click “buy”. If you just buy a $10 item here and a $20 item there, it can add up to a lot of money before you even realize it; using the shopping cart will let you add up the prices and get a clearer picture of how much you’re going to be spending before you actually check out.

I’d also like to ask that, if you’re going to be ordering from Amazon on Prime Day, please click through a link from here, such as the one to the launch page above, before ordering. That will give me a small percentage of whatever amount you spend at Amazon for the next 24 hours, as well as potential bounties if you sign up for one of Amazon’s subscription programs, without costing you anything extra. I don’t get paid directly for writing for TeleRead anymore, so the more I can get from indirect means, the more likely I’ll be able to keep writing more stuff more frequently.

In any case, I hope you are able to find some good deals this Prime Day. Please feel free to leave comments about any interesting offers you turn up!

If you found this post worth reading and want to kick in a buck or two to the author, click here.