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PHYSICAL BOOK vs EBOOK

Posted on May 26, 2015 by Elle Knowles
PHYSICAL BOOK vs EBOOK

So what are your thoughts on this? Do you prefer a physical book – one you can hold, smell, feel, and showcase on your shelf? (And share with others as you wish!)

Or do you love the e-book – landing silently on your kindle or tablet from the technology of the 21st century? It takes up little space –  just a small notch on your memory and you have every book you ever bought to take with you wherever you go! (And you can’t always share!)

My last post (BOOKS ARE YOUR FRIENDS) brought this question up and I had many comments on the subject via FB so I thought I would take a poll to get a count.

You can actually check out e-books through your public library along with the old-fashion way of checking them out in physical form. How many young children have a kindle or tablet or phone to read an e-book on? (Probably more than you think!) Do they have to borrow from Mom or Dad? Do they have favorite bedtime stories from dog-eared books or from pristine copies on your kindle?

I do miss my books though. When we moved into this small house I knew there wasn’t much space so I gave most of them away to my children or Goodwill. Now I am very slowly building my stock up once again because I still find myself more and more hitting that purchase with one-click button on kindle.

Let me know what your thoughts are on this subject and take the poll.

~Elle

Follow me on Facebook to keep up with the Alaska story! Yes, I will probably publish it on Kindle, but also in paperback!

 

 

26 Comments

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About Elle Knowles

Elle Knowles lives in the Florida Panhandle with her husband and off-at-college-most-of-the-time son. She has four daughters, one son, and eleven beautiful grandchildren. 'Crossing the Line' is her first novel. The sequel 'What Line' is a work in progress. Recently published is Coffee-Drunk Or Blind - a nonfiction story of homesteading in the Alaska wilderness with her parents and four siblings, told through letters by her mother and remembered accounts from the family.

26 responses »

  1. Clare | May 29, 2015 at 7:07 pm

    Hi Elle,

    I love physical books, they hold so much character, but they can be cumbersome, particularly for carrying to and from work if you have to commute long distances and want to read to while away the time.

    We transitioned to eBooks about four years ago. Keeping only sentimental and hard covered books, we then donated everything else to charity (Lifeline Bookfest) and although I would love to have floor to ceiling bookcases, full of dusty tomes, that is not going to happen.

    It took some time to get used to eBooks, (we both have iPads) but there are so many free books we have now read that we would never have done otherwise. I’m not even prepared to pay $5 for a book I can get for free from iBooks. As a ‘purchase’, I can then download the book onto any family device (including my Mac), even if I my iPad breaks or gets lost or stolen, I still have my ‘eBooks’.

    Sadly, if I lost a physical book, I’d have to buy it again.

    Clare

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  2. Roni | May 29, 2015 at 4:21 pm

    it depends for me. I have a long commute so I down audio e-books to OverDrive & listen on the drive to work. BUT if I am at home or on vacation it MUST be a physical book. I like the experience of turning pages and the smell of books and ‘seeing’ how far I am with the bookmark when I put it down and close it. Nothin’ beats that on a cold rainy day, certainly not an e-book!

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  3. clara@expatpartnersurvival.com | May 28, 2015 at 7:46 pm

    Personally still prefer physical book but trying to transition to more ebooks… My daughters have tablets but do still prefer real books although they download from our local library too.

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  4. jackiemallon | May 28, 2015 at 6:34 pm

    Well, I think I’ve made my thoughts very clear 🙂

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  5. 39yearslame | May 28, 2015 at 9:42 am

    While I’m usually a “physical books” type, there are definitely things to be said for e-books. Especially in my small, cluttered house. And yet my Kindle died on me through neglect, but then it turned out there’s an app for tablets to let you read your Kindle purchases on there, so I didn’t need to buy a new one.

    Of course, for me, the most important aspect is price and availability. I usually read non-fiction, and even when the books I read are available on Kindle, they tend to cost just as much as the physical copies, so that if I can find a used copy, it’s actually cheaper to get the physical copy. Plus it’s easier to quote from a physical copy, because it has page numbers. There’s apparently a format for quoting from an e-book (something about location #s) but it looks like a hassle, and it would make the quote deucedly difficult for my professors to track down if they wanted to check on it.

    But as someone planning on self-publishing some books, if I can ever get ’em cleaned up to a point where others could stand to read them, I shouldn’t knock e-books: it’s thanks to them that self-publishing has become a viable alternative, instead of something horribly pricey and good only for self-gratification.

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    • Elle Knowles | May 28, 2015 at 9:59 am

      I agree with you on the pricing. I hardly ever pay more that $8 for an e-book and rarely that if I can help it! Really, after $5 I might as well get the physical copy. I usually wait for the ebook version to go on sale. Thanks for your input! ~Elle

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  6. WagginMaster (aka Jerry) | May 28, 2015 at 5:54 am

    Reblogged this on Tales from the WagginMaster and commented:
    From my blogger friend, Elle. What are your thoughts? I prefer electronic media while Carol prefers paper. Perhaps there is a place for both.

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  7. Fimnora Westcaw | May 26, 2015 at 11:20 am

    I grew up with a rather sizable library in my house. My parents were both avid readers and our living room held the majority of those books, on shelves which my father built that was literally one full wall, that left just enough room near the floor for the couch to fit.
    As I began accumulating my own books, I had shelves put up in my room, for own collection.

    In 1989, we moved upstate, and the primary reason for buying this house was that it had built in bookcases on the lower floor. I mean, we’re talking stacks! Plus the back room had the same but just one wall of shelves, and one upstairs room which became my mother’s meditation room, also had built in shelves. My own room in the new house eventually was furnished with a wall unit which were dresser drawers on the bottom, and then all bookshelves on the top, all the way up to the ceiling.

    Flash forward to getting married when I was 47, and I arrive in my new home to find a room that served as a library. My husband was even more avid a reader! In 2005 we moved up here to take care of my parents. We had to give away many many of my husband’s books. My own collection remained in my family’s house when I left.

    Somewhere after we moved up here, my BFF told me she got a kindle. While it took me six years to decide to get one as well, once I did, and got addicted to buying books at a click, I was never going back to the physical book, but I also won’t part with my collection of special physical books, either.

    In a couple of years from now, we’re expecting to move again, and that library downstairs now as additions of our regular bookcases squeezed in between the stacks. I honestly can’t see hanging on to half of the books down their… One they’re so musty, and two, half of them are there simply because either I wanted to read them, or hubby wanted to do the same. But that move will be so chock full of book boxes that we’ll need a separate truck just to have them moved. AND we’d have to make sure the house we move into actually has a library equal to this one. That makes me happy for a kindle, and just like with video tapes, and DVDs I’m ready to trade those physical things in for digital, because it just makes life easier. I’m at a point in my life where easier is beginning to win out over ‘but I want to keep that,’ thoughts.

    When I got my kindle I literally got over 1000 books, and it’s all in one single pocket sized book, which is actually also the kindle tablet… I’m ready, on that front, to move into the 21st century. A last note, we don’t have children, so who will inherit these books when we’re gone? Nobody. Libraries, we found, don’t want lots of books. We tried to bring the ones we really didn’t want to keep into the library, and they turned them down… Goodwill was a lifesaver on that front. But it would be so much better just to not have the mountain of stuff we have, as we head into our elder years.

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  8. Trudy | May 26, 2015 at 8:49 am

    I like a real library in my home, even though it can be cluttered, as is the case right at this moment. I’ve tried reading on my phone and it doesn’t work for me. Too cheap to buy an E- Reader because I know I will forget its there collecting dust, or I will loose it.

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  9. Charles Yallowitz | May 26, 2015 at 5:20 am

    I tend to read paperback more often than eBook. A big reason for that is because I read so slowly that my paperback collection is still my top priority. Also keep forgetting to charge the Kindle. Honestly, I prefer both. As long as the story is fun and entertaining.

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    • Elle Knowles | May 26, 2015 at 7:24 am

      I like to read from cover to cover Charles and it irks me when I open a new book on my Kindle and I see no cover first. It skips right to the first chapter! I have to flip back to start from scratch. I know that’s a petty point, but why bother with a book cover that’s supposed to be so important when you don’t see it after you buy it? ! ~Elle

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