Quote:
Originally Posted by Ninjalawyer
Just like the title of the thread says, I've slowly been shifting my reading back to physical books lately. Has this been the case for anyone else?
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No, it didn't for me. Let me show you one of my re-reads of the near future:
1.036 pages. Nuff said.
(In a normal Del Rey / Random House paperback size with ~2400 characters per page, the total number of pages would be 1.181, according to Calibre's Count Pages plugin, the series being 5 books, making an average of 235 pages per book.)
If some more explanation is warranted:
1. The e-reader allows me to read that in public transport.
2. "Allows me to", firstly because of size, and secondly because the e-reader is anonymous. I have reached an age at which reading books like that could easily be considered childish. And it will be, because I live in a part of the Netherlands where people are often very narrow-minded about things they don't know. (The cover image alone is enough to tell these people that this is "probably not a book for proper grown-ups".) I'm not ashamed of whatever I want to read, but I'd rather not invite any comments. I'm normally Mr. Gentleman himself with a patience that could fill a bottomless well, but I know myself well enough to know that I have an extremely volatile personality if it comes to being harassed or ridiculed. I avoid that it happens.
3. Adjustable fonts and font sizes.
4. Free classics, saving me hundreds of euro's.
5. If I have to buy books in English in The Netherlands, a paperback will cost me between €7 and €10. An EPUB at a foreign store will often cost me (much) less than $7 (€5.25). This sometimes saves me 50% or more.
6. E-books save me entire walls of space.
7. E-books are much more easy to handle with regard to size and weight.
8. I can adjust the layout of an e-book if I so wish.
I did return to paper books from an e-reader in the beginning of 2008, but a lot of stuff I wanted to read was not available as an e-book back then. If it was, it was often a badly pirated and OCR-ed file. EPUB's were just starting out. If something was wrong with a book, it was almost impossible to fix it. Calibre was not (yet) mature enough, at least not for me. Conversion was tacky.
Much has changed in 5 years time. I'll never return to paper books. If the price for an e-book is too high compared to the paper version, I'll just wait until it comes down, or it becomes an offer somewhere. Enough other stuff to read.