Sacrificing Pieces

I'm struggling with sacrificing pieces. How do you know when it is the best move. My gut has me wanting to hold on to every piece. 

There are WHOLE books dedicated to sacrificing pieces

I understand that there are books but I a sincere novice and I think they may be over my head. Do you know of any for beginners? Or, does anyone have any really basic advice for a newbie that is trying to develop? As I get more of a hang of the game I plan to dig into books a lot more but for now I am just trying to get the general gist of the game. 

It looks like you are only doing puzzles.  So I'll focus on that.  At your level the only sacrifice should lead to mate.  A lot of times you'll say to yourself I could mate him in 2 with my rook and bishop if that pawn weren't there.  Well if your queen can remove that pawn, sac it.  In general don't sacrifice a peice unless you can see the end of  the combination.

I used to very much play that way, where I had trouble losing any pieces at all and didn't ever want to sacrifice. to know what to sacrifice and what not to it's really helpful to learn the point system in chess and learn which pieces are worth more, then you know which ones are a little more worth protecting and which ones you should sacrifice of you have a chance to take an opponent's piece of higher value. also just experimenting with it against computers or in unrated games is helpful to just get used to being okay with losing pieces and figuring out which you find most useful to keep.

Good thread and stuff to consider. Not to sidetrack the op but I have a tendency to do the opposite. Get up a piece and start trading like a madman.

There are a few ways to learn about sacrifices.  Fire up a half decent computer bot to see how they go, read a book/article, do analysis and see where the high level bot actually recommends doing it (is rare!), or just go with it and see if you can beat people with your wisdom (if not, reconsider your approach). 

Its common to have a sacrifice that works if your opponent can't figure out how to deal with it (AKA hope chess: you hope your opponent is not so good).  Its rather rare to have one that your opponent can't do anything about, where taking is bad AND not taking is ALSO bad.  Finding those is very difficult for most people esp with time concerns.  

A very high % of sacs that I have seen in my games and managed to make work were simply to clear away pawns followed by a mating attack.  Maybe try to look at it from there as a starting place. 

It's a good feeling to get toward the end game even with the inaccuracies. For me it's like you're getting to a less cluttered, simpler arena that compares to the puzzles. At the beginning level it seems like there's a lot of hyper aggression going on early and if you combat that initial onslaught plan b and c are absent from your opponent. I guess I'm talking about a reacting versus acting.

Thank you so much to everyone that responded. There is so many good suggestions for me to use! 

Totally lost with "draw" I am dertimed to learn this game!

when you feel deadlocked. give away a knight for a pawn and you will see that usually it strengthens your position. look ahead.

Don't sacrifice a piece unless you get something very serious for it. Like a devastating attack that you can't really calculate but almost.

A pawn you can sacrifice for much less (for example, saccing a pawn for a lead in development and initiative is fine, especially in rapid and blitz), but with a piece sacrifice you have to be much more cautious.

This is nonsense, and either trolling or a very bad advice.