For many people, their summer holiday is the only chance they get to fit in some reading. Your bag is packed, your passport is ready and you have carefully chosen which books by which authors you are going to pack. But what type of book do you take with you? Both print books and ebooks have their advantages (and disadvantages) but which side of the fence do you come down on?
Books are portable, you can pop them in your handbag, rucksack or beach bag and take them wherever you want. But that's just one or two books. With an e-reader in your bag, that's potentially thousands of books at your disposal at the push of a button. There's also the convenience of ebooks. If you think of a book you'd like to read, on holiday with no book shops in the area, it is available on the device immediately. That said, dropping your book in the pool, or getting sand stuck all over it, is a lot more drastic if it's an ebook on your expensive e-reader..
Physical books are quite destructible and many of us quite happily scribble notes as we read or fold down corners to mark our place. Although, if you are the kind of person who picks up and puts down a lot of books without much thought, downloading ebooks is a lot less hassle than ordering physical copies and arranging their delivery.
For a lot of people there is something romantic about books. Because they are physical things they have texture, smell and hold memories, maybe of a childhood holiday. Paper books come at a price, however: the print media costs us about 125,000 trees each year.
If you're not particularly romantic about books, ebooks can be a huge advantage. Ebooks are very often cheaper than physical books, even at release, and if that means you end up buying far too many there's no need to fill your house with bookcases . That said, there is no way of taking all your old ebooks to a car boot, to re-coup some of the cost and when you buy an ebook, that doesn't necessarily mean you own it, in the traditional sense. DRM (Digital Rights Management) can make it complicated or simply impossible to move services – from Kindle to Kobo, for example – or sell or lend your ebooks to other people.
Not many of us would want to admit it but reading books is often when we come across new words. Any e-readers and tablets now come with dictionaries and if you're reading on a tablet with Wi-Fi or 3G, the whole internet is at your disposal. Dictionaries, bookmarking, the internet are all great tools but being constantly connected – with Facebook notifications popping up every two minutes – can be a distraction, breaking the immersion of a good read.
With ebooks, people can't see your embarrassing reading choices but seeing someone with the same book – or a favourite book – can start conversations on those boring train journeys…
When we asked our Twitter followers which they preferred, we were overwhelmed with responses, clearly this is a topic that people are passionate about! One thing definitely bears repeating though, with print and ebooks, it isn’t either or. You can read a mixture of the two formats, as the majority of our readers do (51.07% of our readers use both print and ebooks) and it is unlikely that one will ever replace the other. Consider this as well, does it really matter which format they use as long as people are reading?
Join the conversation below and let us know your thoughts...
Further reading:
* Why printed books will never die
* The advantages of ebooks versus traditional books
* What is the future of reading?
* Can ebooks and libraries co-exist?