Quote:
Originally Posted by Breid
I am very possibly representative of a minority viewpoint on this forum, but I am puzzeled by other folks desire to store thousands of ebooks on their ereaders. I am building my collection and add all my purchases to Calibre, which I backup regularly. But I only keep my to be read books on my ereader, and as I currently have 40 titles on that shelf, I reckon that will keep me in reading material for at least a month, I am wondering if I am a slow reader, or if other folks have a higher 'must store' threshold than mine?
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Firstly, because I feel that unused storage on a device is just wasted space. I paid for it, I want to use it. Which is why I get annoyed when they over promise book storage on a device. If you advertise that it can take a 32G microSD card, then the machine should be able to process the amount of files that can be fit on that space without going brain dead. First thing I do with a new ereader is to fill it up and see if it really works as advertised. So far, I've been more disappointed than not.
Secondly I also like having my total library with me. I quit picking my Next Reads ahead of time, because by the time I finish a book, unless my next one was one in the series I was reading, I've probably changed my mind. Much easier to have my library with me to indulge my whims. That's a large part of my love of reading, is my libraries and having them handy. I've had some long, unhappy dry spells I don't intend to live through again.
Third, I read a lot of fanfic. Usually I don't bother with anything smaller than 10 pages, but most are really not much more than that. The numbers can add up fast if you're collecting in a specific fandom. Depending on story size, I can easily burn through quite a few in a week even if they're large 200 pagers. One really bad night I went through 30 stories. 23 were deleted after a page or so, 5 were fairly good stories I enjoyed, and 2 were keepers I've specifically tagged so I won't delete them. No problems zapping the rest since they're all free. And I didn't have to get out of bed to hustle new ones. Still had more than plenty to chose from at any given time. I think a lot of people read stuff that wouldn't be close to a novel in size so burn through them pretty fast.
In case of emergency, they're backup. I do have a ton of backups at home, in a nice media safe, and one daily off-site backup. But having a backup with me is just part of it. I'd rather have them on my machine than on a flash drive. Sometimes, bad things happen and you're doing good to grab a purse, your kids/hubby/pet and leave your belongings to fate.
And as I said before, I've paid for the space. Leaving it empty just seems wasteful.