Quote:
Originally Posted by rhadin
There are a lot of good reasons to buy an ebook, but when I weigh those reasons against buying a print book, the balance has changed. When the Sony 505 came out, I bought it and started buying ebooks instead of print. But then I began facing some of the limitations of ebooks, such as not being able to share the books with my wife and son.
And, yes, I am aware of DRM removal but that not only requires additional work and know-how, but, more importantly, it still requires multiple reading devices. The argument that some make that my wife and son could read the books on their computers or smartphones that they already own doesn't make ebooks more desirable. Reading on the computer makes the ebooks nonportable (and have you tried reading on your desktop while in bed?). As for the smartphone, my son tried and thought it was one of the worst experiences in the world. He could only display a small portion of a page at a time.
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I solved the problem of sharing ebooks with my husband and children by giving Kobos loaded with interesting books as Christmas and/or birthday presents.
When they want a change of books my calibre library has both covers and summaries to aid in browsing. I admit that this solution was prompted by the large number of free/cheap books I had already obtained of interest to them (Baen CDs and free library, classic kids books, Father Brown mysteries, old books of folklore, ....) which meant that they were immediately appreciated.