I’m a bibliophile. That means that I am hopelessly and completely addicted to books. I love them, all of them; even the bad ones. Books make me happy. I just like having them around. I was never interested in owning an ereader because I love books. For me, it would be the same as trading in my husband for his avatar. So an ereader was out of the question.
Then I found out you can carry 3,000 books in your purse and each book is cheaper than a physical book. Ok, wait just one second, 3,000 and cheaper? I decided that maybe ereaders weren’t so bad after all. Then I bought one.
The big two on the market, Kindle and Nook, both work essentially the same way. You buy a book from the website or from the device itself and within a minute the book is on the device and you can read it. In the case of both of them, the ebook is cheaper than the physical book, often by more than 50%
After I bought my reader I found out that there are literally millions of free ebooks out there! These tend to be classic literature that have expired copyrights. Both Amazon for the Kindle and Barnes and Noble for the Nook have these books available for free download. Even out of copyright classic books cost something in their physical form.
I happen to love classic literature and with the number of books available, I can literally spend the rest of my life reading them for free. This cuts out trips to the library, bookstore and used bookstore hunting for them.
When people write about the cost of ebooks being cheaper than physical books, they tend to mean dollar for dollar. They often don’t take into consideration things like shipping costs, gas and wear and tear on your car or time spent getting the books. Those costs are more fluid so they are often overlooked. So let me break it down.
I live 45 minutes from the nearest Barnes and Noble. That means that I have an hour and a half just in driving just to get the book. There is the gas consumed by the car, not to mention the stress on the car. Then after I get to the store I have to look for the book. If they have it, I buy it and go home. If they don’t have it then I can order it and come back and pick it up. Or I can go to their website, place the order and pay for shipping and wait a week for it to arrive. Now if I have an ereader I can go to either the Barnes and Noble website or the Amazon website, type the title into the search box, click on the ebook edition and within a minute I have the book.
I still love books; I still have many of them around my house. But the ebooks are very quickly crowding them out. I guess you could say I’ve converted to being an ebibliophile.
I’m even starting to look at my husband’s avatar a little funny.