Physical book collections?

[kindlekitten]

Originally Posted by inkyness

Awesome - I was beginning to think everyone here had converted almost entirely to ebooks, haha.


Well, I very rarely read newspapers or magazines anyway. Honestly, though, I've thought about it a lot and I think my original estimate is going to be more or less accurate. Just because a lot of other people have ended up using ereaders exclusively doesn't mean I will end up doing that too.

The thing about print books from libraries is that they're still the only way you can read most books for free, and with a few exceptions (i.e. classics, library ebooks, or I guess piracy) that won't change.

Even now, except at library sales, I basically don't buy any books because I think I might like them. I read them from the library first, and if I absolutely love something I buy it in hardcover. So in order to use my reader for 95% of all my reading, I'd have to end up either changing what I read, or buying significantly more books than I do at the moment. (I'm sure I'll buy a few ebooks, for convenience, but it would cost a fortune to buy everything I read before I read it.)

And I think I'll probably buy close to the same amount of hardcovers even after I get my ereader, because I just like the feeling of them. I like the cover art, the jacket text, the fonts and typography that are used, the fact that authors are able to sign them. I like being able to physically flip through them, to sometimes physically put a marker in various scenes and physically see where each of them are in the story. (I don't know, perhaps part of this "obsession" is because I'm an aspiring author myself.)

I do think it would be interesting to keep track over the next year of what books I read, what formats I read them in, and how many books of each format I buy. I can make another post to share the results if I remember.

And even though I spent a lot of this post defending physical books, I'm not trying to be anti-ebook or anything; obviously they have plenty of their own advantages, and if I didn't believe that I wouldn't be eagerly waiting for my Kindle's scheduled delivery on Friday.

Pay attention to the Kindle forums, there is a thread towards the top of the page in the stickies that lists free and inexpensive books. I have gotten literally hundreds of them. there are also places like Baen and Smashwords that have free books. additionally, if you are in the US it is NOT illegal to convert a book for your own use