Ebooks vs paper

[cjsmith]

What are your thoughts on Kindle (or other electronic format) versus paper books?

I’ve got an unwieldy paper library and am starting to collect books in Kindle format. I suspect Kindle will be my preference for fiction, since I go through that quickly and it’s a lightweight way to carry a lot. Browsing is awkward in electronic format, leading me to think I’d rather have paper cookbooks, but the nondestructibility of a tablet in a case is also attractive in the kitchen.

Which kinds of books do you prefer to have in which formats?

Comments

[firecat]

I've switched to ebooks almost exclusively because I love buying books and have no physical space to store more books, and because I like taking notes about books as I read them, and ebooks make that a lot easier. It's also easier to search an ebook, and searching is useful now because my memory isn't what it once was. But I'm mostly not making an effort to replace my paper books with ebooks, except if I see a book I own that's on sale in ebook form for a couple of bucks, I buy it.

I exclusively buy ebooks I can convert to non-DRM epub format. There are conversion tools that work with the Calibre ebook management app. Converting Kindle books is hard, so I mostly buy ebooks from Kobo or ebooks.com or one of the smaller retailers of epubs. I store my ebooks in Dropbox. I read them on an iPhone or iPad using the Marvin app.

I can see how cookbooks might work better in paper, but I don't usually use cookbooks in the kitchen. If I want a recipe I print it out.

[cjsmith]

I do like the fact I can highlight bits of an ebook without feeling like I’ve damaged it. This may end up being especially helpful for nonfictIon where out of the whole book I got one gem of really useful info.

Interesting about ePub! I have got to learn more about non-DRM ePub. I’ve been simply buying things when they’re on deep discount in kindle format.

I should probably drop the idea of converting my existing library. Not only don’t I have the money for that, I don’t have enough lifespan left to read them all again anyway.