eBooks vs. Real Books

As I mentioned in my last blog post, I do enjoy my reading, even though it does come at a cost (which I do tend to complain about…). A number of my friends have suggested getting an eBook reader and getting my books in a digital format, which is quite often cheaper. There are a number of benefits to eBooks:

• Portability – Ever wanted to take your entire book collection on holiday with you? eBooks make it possible! (Okay, perhaps not quite depending on memory restrictions, but eBooks are definitely more portable than their paper counterparts).
• Searching – Obviously, with academic texts this can be a great boon, but I find it very rare that I attempt to search for a particular word or phrase in a novel of some form.
• Backlighting – To the best of my knowledge, modern e-Ink eBook readers do not have backlighting available, and so are only readable in the same conditions as regular paper. I could be wrong here, so please feel free to correct me!
• Price – If you’re going to quote monetary savings as a reason to get an eBook reader, I’m probably going to ignore you. eBooks are generally only £1-2 cheaper than their paper counterparts (in the UK, at least), and Amazon often offer bigger discounts on their real books.
• DRM – If you’re a publisher, this might be a good thing. But I think a lot of people would quite like to be able to lend books to their friends and family without having to worry about DRM restrictions and so on… Paper books are so easy to lend, you just hand the book on to someone else. How do you lend someone an eBook?

I can see why eBook readers would definitely be an ideal solution for reading and distributing academic texts, but I really can’t see the benefits (at this moment in time) over “real” books. I also quite like to be able to flick through books, jump back and forth, quickly refer to something on the previous page (without having to wait for the lengthy “refresh” on e-Ink eBook readers) and various other things like that…

Oh! One more thing! I love good cover art. I know I’m not supposed to, but I often do judge a book by its cover…