I got a kindle for Christmas, and though I love it dearly, it has in no way stopped me from buying and reading physical books. The kindle is certainly convenient. It's much easier to read on the metro. I'm usually wearing three-inch heels and hanging on to a pole to keep from falling over, so being able to read one-handed makes life easier. But that hasn't turned out to be a good enough reason for me to forsake physical books.
I find myself continuing to buy physical books. I just can't stop. I still take books on the metro and am capable of reading them one-handed, for the most part. And I actually prefer physical books on planes because I can read them during take-off and landing. This is at constant war with my need to pack fewer books on vacation. I'm the kind of person who took two books and a kindle to Las Vegas for a weekend and actually read both books and used the kindle (at a night club).
I've finally come to terms with the fact that I will probably never stop buying physical books, despite the convenience of my kindle. It simply doesn't meet all of my needs as a reader. I have managed to find a decent balance for purchasing books in different formats. Here's how I generally divide things up.
Reasons to buy the physical book
It's a graphic novel - The kindle is black and white. But even if I had an iPad, I think I'd still buy physical versions of graphic novels and comic books. My experience reading comics on a screen has never been wholly satisfying. Unless the screen is big enough to show a full page at time, you have to zoom in. And then depending on the layout of the page, you have to scroll all over the place to read the whole thing. Generally, the author/artist put a lot of thought into the layout of a page and expects you to take in the entire thing as a whole. The kindle doesn't even handle basic illustrations very well. I read The Book Thief on is, and the illustrated sections were incredibly frustrating. They took longer than normal to load and there were random blank pages that had me worried I was missing part of the story. E-Ink technology just hasn't caught up with this yet.
I already own part of the series - There are some series that I'm only partway through. I started them with physical books, and I want to own the entire series in the same format. I currently own 30 of the 39 published Discworld books and I intend to keep buying the physical copies so they can all sit on the shelf together
I think Boyfriend or his mom would be interested in reading the book - If I expect I'll lend a book to someone, I'm going to buy a physical copy. It's just easier that way.
I want the book on my shelf - There are some books that just look cool. I want them sitting on my shelf to show that I've read them. Or for easy reference. Things like Isaac Newton's The Principia (which was a Christmas gift years before I got my kindle) fall into this category. Yes, this is a bit pretentious. But I still dream of having a library in my house one day. A library full of awesome books.
It's a collection of short stories - The kindle is really geared to reading a book cover to cover. While it's possible to jump around in a book, provided it has a linked-up table of contents, the interface really isn't optimized for it. When I read a collection of short stories, I rarely read them in order. I jump around. I skip stories. I come back to others. This is easier to do with a physical book than a kindle.
It's not available on the kindle - This happens more often than I expected. Some authors are surprisingly resistant to electronic readers. Some just haven't gotten around to converting their works yet. Either way, it makes the decision easy.
Reasons to buy the electronic book
It's free - This is the big reason. I got all of Sherlock Holmes, Charles Dickens, and Jane Austen on my kindle because I was able to download them without paying anything. I actually grabbed a lot of classics this way. I was mostly buying the cheap versions of these books before. I'm still hoping to one day inherit my grandfather's awesome collection of beautifully bound classics, so I don't feel a pressing need to get copies of these books for display. I can always buy cool versions in the future without being out any more money than I would have been in the first place. You really can't argue with free, and since the kindle's memory is huge, I have no real fear of filling it up. That said, the free versions (from gutenberg.org) aren't always formatted the best. I had to delete The Complete Works of Shakespeare because I couldn't click directly to any given play. You get what you pay for.
It's really cheap - Amazon has started releasing cheap versions of classics that are still covered by copyright law. $3 a pop for anything by Kurt Vonnegut, for example. I haven't bought these yet, but that price tag is enough to tempt me away from a physical copy. At least for a first read-through. I had actually expected e-books to be the cheaper option for the most part, but this hasn't been the case. Especially for new releases, Amazon.com will generally offer the physical book at a lower cost than the e-book.
The physical book is huge - Sometimes a book is just too big. I do most of my reading away from home - on the metro, in the waiting room, on vacation - and I don't want to lug around a huge book just so I can read it. Infinite Jest is 9.1" x 6.1" x 2.1" and weighs almost three pounds. Each book in A Song of Ice and Fire is roughly 1000 pages long. It's easier to carry these beasts around on my kindle.
I want to be able to carry the book around with me - There are some books I love and want to be able to have on my person at all times. Good Omens falls under this category. I own the physical book, but it's hardcover and I'm always a bit worried I'm going to ruin it. If the electronic book is ever made available, I'll buy it in a heartbeat. (It currently isn't available because the kindle inexplicably can't split up hyphenated words to appear on separate line. Thus the name "Things-Not-Working-Properly-Even-After-You've-Given-Them-A-Good-Thumping-But-Secretly-No-Alcohol-Lager" destroys the formatting of the book.)
The book is a bit embarrassing - If I had owned a kindle a few years ago, that's how I would have consumed Twilight. I do get a perverse sort of pride from having those books sitting on my shelf, but it was a bit embarrassing to read them in public. This is also why I bought Amber Benson's most recent book on my kindle. I want to read these things, but I don't want to risk being approached about them by strangers.
Each book is a special case, of course. While I definitely want to physical copy of some and the electronic copy of others, I occasionally have trouble choosing a format. Ever since Dead Reckoning came out over a month ago, I've been going back and forth. The e-book was shockingly more expensive than the physical book, but I wasn't sure I wanted to carry a hard cover around. Or pay $15 for a book that will probably take me three days to read and hasn't gotten stellar reviews. I'll probably end up waiting for either the kindle price to drop dramatically or the paperback to come out next spring. We'll see which happens first. In the meantime, I'm excited to get back to my kindle for the next installment of A Song of Ice and Fire.
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