E-Books
I know I’m probably a bit late to the bandwagon when it comes to e-books but the other night I finished my first ever e-book using the Kindle app.
When I purchased my iPad 2 a couple of months ago I was determined to try and use it for books in one, way shape or form and whilst Apple’s ‘iBooks’ app is very nice amazon has a better reputation for e-reading with Kindles and if I ever ended up with a Kindle any books would work with it. On top of that the Amazon Kindle store is a lot cheaper than the iBooks store.
I’m not going to review the book I read but share my thoughts on the world of e-reading!
Advantages
Chatting to Suzie on Facebook (check out her blog on Kindles here) she talks about how her Kindle takes up a lot less space than lots of books and also is far more portable for travelling and I think I tend to agree. I’m pretty bad at remembering to pack a book but would probably remember my iPad…on top of that I like that the app syncs which means I could continue where I left off on my iPhone. Having a limitless supply of holiday reading without having stupidly heavy bags could be a big advantage.
I also think that in terms of space e-books have a lot going for them. Our house has lots of books…both fiction and non-fiction and lots of them youth work related and actually having a searchable library would be incredibly useful.
The other thing I like about the idea of e-books is the fact that they are instant, you could simply want a book and buy it…on top of that there’s lots of classics which are available for free. The ability to store Kindle books in the cloud too is a massive advantage because you don’t clog up all your space!
Disadvantages
Having owned an iPod for years and listening to most of my music digitally I still buy CDs…the reason? I like the artwork and I like having something physical. With music I enjoy flicking through the artwork, lyrics, thank-you’s and generally being a geek about it…on top of that you feel like there is more to show for your £8 with a CD than a series of files (plus I can easily listen to them in the car without the crackle of the fm transmitter).
However I don’t have that same artwork attachment with books nor will a book fit in my car stereo without the aid of a hammer which remains the ‘what do I have to show for my money’ aspect which again (and I can’t quite explain why) doesn’t bother me with the idea of e-books but I guess could put some people off.
One thing which may be more of a disadvantage with an e-book (although less so if you own a real Kindle and not the app) is that addition of more screens. I’m very aware that for most of my life I’m looking at a screen whether it’s an iPad, iPhone, Computer, TV or whatnot and wonder if this is a good thing or not?
Lending & Selling Books
One big disadvantage over real books is that you can lend and sell them. Most of the books I buy I get off amazon marketplace and so for £3 I can have a book delivered…e-books don’t have that same advantage (although if your e-book retailer controlled the storage of the e-book I’m sure there’s scope for a secondhand ‘e-book’ store) and so I’d have to pay more for books (although if it’s only a little it probably wouldn’t have a massive impact but the loss of that ‘got a bargain’ feeling is a shame).
When it comes to lending, I am told there is a way to do this with kindle although I’m yet to discover it but if they sussed that e-books would be awesome…no need to worry about who has that missing book!
Overview
To summarise what is probably a fairly badly written, disorganised, ‘Mark is too sleepy to be typing’ blog I think that in principal I like the idea of e-books. I currently have a bit of a reading pile of real books but will probably start getting into them after. I don’t think I’ll be replacing the books I have with e-books (i.e. selling a book then buying the same as an e-book) simply because it would work out too expensive and to that extent it’s a shame that books don’t have the same transferrable nature as CDs…you can easily get your CD onto an iPod however without a hell of a lot of patience and several years with a scanner doing that for a library of books is impossible!
It’ll be interesting to see if I get into them a bit more over the coming months…will probably blog again in the future (on e-books and in general!)
Currently Reading: Life without Limts by Nick Vujicic and I, Partridge by Alan Partridge/Steve Coogan
Today I awoke to the sad news that Apple co-founder Steve Jobs had passed away. Steve, who had been battling with cancer for years stepped down as Apple CEO in August handing over to Tim Cook. This is what the Apple website says about Steve’s passing:
I’ve just sat for the last hour or so watching the live feed from the Apple ‘Come see our latest creation’ event coverage and whilst I have a few blogs in the pipeline (which will appear over the next couple of days) I thought I’d do a round-up post with some thoughts on the Apple event.