Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Buying Books


When I first got my Kindle, I went of a crazy ass buying spree.  Then I bought a Nook Simple Touch because it was smaller, easier to hold, and use.  I bought a metric shit ton of books from BN too.  I ended up using Calibre to store my books. I'd found a way to strip off the DRM and store them in Calibre so that it didn't matter whether I was using my Kindle or Nook, I could read them wherever I wanted.

I still love my Nook. It's great for traveling, wonderful to have when I need a new book but aren't near a bookstore, and awesome for reading book samples before buying the whole thing.  However, in the last year, I noticed that I've reverted to buying more paper books than e-books again, and I'm not sure why.

I love reading e-books, but there's something about owning the book that appeals to me. Even though I don't have the time to read like I did as a boy, and I don't reread books as often, I still have this need to own them.  The e-books just don't hold the same sexiness of a paper book.

Now, maybe that's just some bullshit nostalgia, but maybe not.  I mean, One of my favorite parts of visiting other cities is browsing used bookstores and uncovering awesome finds.  You can't do that with e-books.

So, I'm curious: now that the e-book thing has settled down, do those of you who read e-books find that you're buying more or them or less?

4 comments:

  1. It's settled down for me. I do tend to buy the e-book first, but if I love a book, I want the physical copy too.

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    1. You buy both? Interesting! There are only a couple of books I've bought both versions of. But, yeah, I guess it had to do with how much I love the book. I've also found that I tend to buy doorstop books in e-book form. Like, I just bought Cloud Atlas for my Nook. And I never would have read The Passage if I hadn't gotten it on my Kindle. Those 1000 page monsters don't travel well.

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  2. I have a few e-books, but not too many. Mostly I just have books that are either free or hard to get in print.

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    1. That's another great reason. Books that are difficult to find are fantastic for the e-book platform. I remember the days of scouring used bookstores for a specific book because it was out of print and no one would order it for me. Now, it's almost impossible for something to go out of print.

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