E-books are better than Printed Books
A different perspective.
If you’re a bibliophile that got enraged reading my article title, here’s where I profoundly apologise to you.
I’m sorry for stating my personal opinion as a fact.
I am an avid reader. In fact, this is my reading count in the past year. As you can see, I do read. If this doesn’t convince you, you can find hoards of book-quotes I post on my Instagram in a bid to interact with fellow bibliophiles who need someone to gush about books with.
Now that I have established how I am a reader, a proactive one at that, let me present my case.
Ebooks I feel, are the sustainable choice.
Books are still books. Whether they’re printed on paper or on a screen. We often tend to romanticise the idea of reading (as we should), and there the ebooks totally lose out to actual books. Otherwise, I feel like ebooks offer a world of advantage over traditional printed hardcover books.
I started reading ebooks using a Kobo (2011–2014) and then transitioned to a Kindle (2014-present). Over these years, I’ve come to realise that I can either update myself to the conveniences of the 21st century or I can drone on about the smell and weight of books while adjusting the monocle on my nose.
Firstly, the biggest advantage ebooks offer is portability. Ebook readers are tiny and depending on the storage capability and cloud sync availability of the device, we get to access thousands of books anywhere, everywhere.
Secondly, ebook readers are easy to clean. With my actual books, I need to follow a cleaning ritual once each year. I live in India where silver fish infestation thrives in books so this ritual isn’t optional. I need to air the books in the sun, then dust them/wipe them down before rearranging them neatly in my mini bookshelves. With the Kindle however, I only need to use cleaning wipes.
Thirdly, ebooks enable me to read all the time. The ‘Device Sync’ feature is great for me. My kindle and the kindle app on my phone work in tandem to ensure I’m reading all the time, which to me is a great thing. Doesn’t reading enable us to just tune out the stupid that surrounds us all the time?
Fourthly, I love the readily available highlight+notes option. While reading a printed book, we can scribble and mar the paper with chicken scratches but with an ebook, that process is neatly simplified. Everything that’s highlighted and all the notes get stored in “Clippings” which can be easily converted to .txt from .azw3. Additionally, the dictionary tool allows me to quickly lookup an unfamiliar word and the ‘Vocabulary Builder’ tool lets me practice these new words I stumble upon while reading books.
Fifthly, I save money on ebooks. Amazon often hosts ebook sales where you’ll get access to great books at throwaway prices. I once bought a ₹1326 book for ₹1. You’ll also get to read some of the classics for free from the Kindle Store. That’s a win-win, isn’t it? With printed books, free books come via libraries and kind friends who lend books. To me, that’s a win-win as well.
There are also other advantages to buying ebooks like:
🖤 I can buy whichever edition of the book I want to.
🖤 I save money not hoarding (& buying) cute bookmarks.
🖤 I can easily gift books.
🖤 The builtin back-light enables me to read ebooks anywhere such that they don’t strain my eyes.
🖤 I have amazing font shape, type and size options readily available in the settings.
🖤 I can share my clippings instantly on Social Media.
🖤 I never suffer from anxiety brought on by a bookmarked page I lost.
Above all else, ebooks are the environment friendly option. Printed books are printed on paper. Most popular publishing houses, unfortunately, don’t use recycled paper for their books. Ebooks don’t need any paper. There is no aesthetic appeal to ebooks but in my opinion, that’s a trade-off that we should willingly make.
Printed books do offer their own unique advantages:
🖤 The weight of a book in your hand.
🖤 The smell of a newly purchased or a really old book.
🖤 The mere fact that you don’t need batteries to read your book.
🖤 The higher information retention that happens when you physically copy your notes/highlights.
🖤 The Social Media Flex value of posing with a hardcover book.
See I know that books have an old world charm. Ebooks will never be able to recreate that feel. They however do recreate the experience of reading a book.
At the end of the day, that’s why we read right? We read to experience the magic of words. We read to open the horizons of our mind to these ideas that somebody else had. We read to nourish our soul. We read to pass the time. We read to stock up our information banks. We read… We read… We read…
The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them.
~Mark Twain
It doesn’t matter where? What matters is that we read.
