In this age of digitalisation everything is digital, our banks, our businesses, our shopping and courtesy this pandemic and lockdown even the schools have gone digital. Offices have moved to Zoom meetings and work from home is the new normal. If everything is so digitalised in our lives how our books can stay behind. If you go as per data there is a 75 percent rise in sale of digital books during lockdown though the figures changed afterwards. But lockdown has certainly changed masses’ reading preferences and reading practices. Thus making more and more people switching to digital books now.
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E-books…. A new age reading practice
E-books have some features, adding to their popularity with each passing day. For E-books you can either purchase an E-reader like or you can use your phone, laptop, desktop or tablet as E-reader. Smartphones have become a basic necessity now a days. So your smartphone is not just your phone, camera, notepad, messenger and laptop but your E- reader too. People prefer E-books because:📚E-books are handy📚
You can carry your entire e-book library with you anywhere you go with your mobile phone or any other small device. However, that luxury is not there with paperbacks. Any time you need to refer a book it is right there with you.
📚Safe from borrowers.📚
You must be having that one friend or relative who has this habit of borrowing books but not of returning them back. Sometimes you are not in a position to say no and are forced to oblige that boss of your dad or your sister’s dad-in-law. But that problem you won’t face with e-books.
📚Easy to transport.📚
Those who are in a transferable job or need to shift houses frequently often face this problem with books. They are forced to spend heavily on their transfer or they are forced to dispose them of at every move. E-books are a boon for such people. You just need to carry your device and you entire library is transported with you.
📚Environment Friendly📚
Tons of trees are cut to make paper for the books. In that context the E-books contribute in a big way to save the green cover that is diminishing already.📚Ease of Reading📚
E-books comes with an advantage of changing the font size as per your convenience. You can read them in low light and even in no light, it is not recommended though.📚Instantly Available📚
To buy a paperback you need to either walk to a bookstore or place an order on some online site and then wait for the delivery but with E-books, the book is delivered instantly to your preferred device.📚Inbuilt dictionaries and Wikipedia 📚
Some E-book reader apps have inbuilt dictionaries and thesauruses for better understanding of the content.📚Samples📚
In case of E-books you can always download a sample of the book and get an idea if you want to read a book or not.
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Printed books… An old world charm
Paperbacks on the other hand has an old world charm. You can do a lot more than with them compared to digital books.
📚Physical Entity📚
Paperbacks are more palpable. You can touch them, hold them and hug them. Some people even love the smell of pages. Paperback feels more alive. You can even dog ear the pages, it’s not a great habit though.
📚Gifting and Sharing📚
It doesn’t mean that E-books can’t be gifted but gifting a paperback has it’s own charm. An author signed copy can be a great gift idea for a book lover. Similarly one can share a book with friends and colleagues.
📚Flaunt your collection📚
Any book lover will like to have a dedicated corner in his/her house to flaunt his/her collection of books. Such a corner provides a perfect reading ambience for a reader.
📚Ease of skimming through the pages📚
It is a lot more easy to skim through a paperback quickly than its digital counterpart. One can easily go back and forth in case of a paperback.
📚No need of Electric power📚
One doesn’t require to charge a paperback. Though it is not completely true as one needs electric power to read in case it is dark.
📚Illustrations and Images📚
Images and illustrations look good on a paperback. E-books are available in black and white display thus making them unsuitable for certain genres like travelogues and cookery.
📚The Cost effectiveness📚
This is one point that is quite debatable here. E-readers are expensive and one need to pay a subscription fee to get the regular service but once you invest in a good E-reader, you have access to loads of free E-books. Even the paid ones are cheaper as compared to their printed counterparts.
📚Health hazard📚
Printed books are comparatively a safer reading option as far as eye sight goes. Using E-readers over a long period of time can effect the eye sight.
Conclusion
E-books and printed books both have their own pros and cons making them equally popular among readers. As long as one is enjoying a book, it doesn’t matter what the format of the book is.
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Note:
This article is mostly based on my experience with kindle device and app. Those who are using some other E-readers might differ in opinion over certain points.
Bibliomaniac_shal 