E-readers vs Paper Books

There was an opinion piece in the Daily Maverick this week, where the writer waxed lyrical over her love for paper books and disdain for e-readers. And I cant begin to tell you how many iterations I have had of this debate, which is always interesting but never constructive.

I could go over the arguments, but I don’t think its really necessary. You prefer what you prefer. Most e-reader users, in my experience, also enjoy the physicality of real books. Hell, I have hard copies of books I originally read in digital format because I loved those books so much I had to have physical copies for myself.

Paper Books

This article made me think, sometimes it feels like those who aggressively reject e-books are in some way scared of them, that to them it represents a loss of the things they hold most dear about books and reading. For example, the writer quoted:

International mental health e-magazine Psychology Today records research that suggests that comprehension is six to eight times better with physical books than e-readers

Charmain Naidoo

And that:

Research has found that we remember and relate to the story less on Kindle than we do with hard copy paper books in our hands

Charmain Naidoo

That got my attention. Because for me personally that is not the case. My memory of a book is dependent on how much I enjoyed the story, not on the type of media I read it on. I will say finding a specific reference in a book is much harder on an e-book.

I don’t believe the matter is as simple as Psychology Today was making it out to be. There isn’t a lot of research I could find on the topic, and half of it I couldn’t access, but these statements are bracketed with caveats like the age of readers and which, form(s) of digital media were being tested. There may be a pattern, but we don’t definitively know what it is.

E-readers

There are some matters I think e-denialists may be missing out on.

The biggest advantage of a e-reader is the cost saving. When you are someone who regularly reads 2-3 books a week, it makes a difference. A new paperback today usually costs in excess of R300 (especially for a local author), secondhand books are not necessarily significantly less. Not only are e-books cheaper, but its easier to search for deals (especially on your wish list books).

But the real advantage I experienced with an e-reader was the opening up of a much, much more varied international library. There are books out there that I will never see in a local bookshop. I have brought books digitally that have represented and inspired me in ways I cant explain, that I would never have discovered if I had stuck to the hard copies. Basically, in buying my e-reader I discovered a whole world of book readers and authors like me, who liked the same sorts of things I did.

Not to say e-readers are without their faults. There is no cataloguing system on kindles for your digital library, mine regularly freezes (I suspect because it wants to update), the battery is never full when you want to sit down for a long reading session, it cant display your books like trophies…I could go on.

But the biggest problem is that they lock you into one (major corporate) supplier. Recently, Amazon decided to stop accepting my payments, the transactions just wouldn’t go through. Amazon blamed my bank, the bank blamed Amazon. I became more worked up that is healthy about being unable to buy books (clearly I have some issues that I should probably see someone about). Actually, in the end, it was a good thing. It made me explore some other sellers apps where I realised that more deals and options were open to me.

To the digital doubters I will say this. You don’t have to be scared. Your e-reader wont replace books in your life. But it may open new literary horizons for you.