I still like my Kindle, but a lot of ebook authors are shooting themselves in the foot by making the above mistakes.

I have a Sony 650. The reasons I didn’t buy a Kindle or Nook are:
Kindle – Amazon regularly does extremely sketchy things that are anti-consumer and I am not willing to support their business model.
Nook – The page turns triggered a migraine when I was looking at it in the store.

The reasons I love my Sony:
-Touch screen that does not hold fingerprints
-Extremely light
-Expandable memory
-Long battery life
-Double-tap a word for dictionary look-up
-Reputable brand; I am sure that the device will last
-Library access
-The file formats that it supports work for me (BBeB (LRF/LRX), PDF, EPUB, TXT, RTF, JPEG, BMP, GIF, PNG, MP3, AAC)

If it was the type of book that I would re-read or refer to then I would buy it and whether on a e-reader or paperback would just depend on the book. I like to take notes in the margins of some books like personal finance books – I have an iPad and do not like how the function works so I would opt for a paperback book. Otherwise, if note taking was no key then I would consider it on an e-reader, as the e-reader is likely the more environmentally sustainable of the two but I would have to look into that more before jumping in whole hog on that statement.

My preference at home is to have a book. I can write notes, fold pages and resell if I want.

Do people take Kindles to the beach? For that, you still need a book.

I’ve been thinking about getting a Kindle, although many of the cons pointed out here hold me back. Sometimes I like have technology more than I like actually using it. But the Kindle seems to be the better product in my limited research, I especially like the 3G function.

I am not a current fiction reader. Most of my reading would be older classics and pub domain stuff off places like Gutenberg. After some of the comments here I wonder if the non-Kindle options would be better?

I am like many of the readers here who like to take paperbacks on trips and then give them away or leave them at the book exchange at the vacation place. After all, I probably only paid 25 or 50 cents for them…and I’ll gladly let someone have them for the experience.

I wish there was a way to sell or give away the rights to the ebooks that you buy. Seems like the digital companies will make a lot more money from selling books 5x to 5 different people whereas before, we just passed the book around and let everyone read it in turn.

But I see a huge, huge benefit if they would put college texts as e-books and sell them for even $20. What an advantage. History of Civ books tend to cost over $100 now and buying it (or even just the rights to it) for $20 would be vastly superior to that. These are books that are used just one semester. However, if an absent minded kid loses his e-reader…hmmm

I’ve wondered how the school in FL that was going to assign each high schooler a Kindle is doing. I wondered if any of the Kindles got sold on Ebay for drug money (or Disney World/Busch Gardens money) and then the kid said he lost his…what then? I’m sure they must have thought through those things and planned for them. At the same time, I’m wondering what has happened with them.

But I also like to dogear pages, look back easily, etc. I’ve not used an ereader, so I can’t compare. If the world really goes to all digital, then I’m sure I’ll adjust, but since a good bit of the world isn’t there yet, it will probably take a bit of time. Maybe my eyes will be so decrepit by then, I won’t care.

Just for the record, I love dead-tree books. I’ve always loved books, and that won’t ever change. But this comes at a time when we’re trying so hard to declutter, and books everywhere are a huge part of the problem. Plus my husband reads so voraciously that he’s always whining about not having anything to read. This will help immensely with that issue, too. I don’t expect to never own a dead-tree book again, and in fact DH and I are both getting some for Christmas But I think the combination of “real” books and e-books will just make our reading experiences better than ever.

Anyway, thank you again to everyone who’s participated in this topic!!!

I think the biggest disadvantage of e-books in my mind is that you cannot resell them like you can a paper book. If you are not going to read a book again why keep it? So I’ve resolved to only buy e-books that I might actually read again. For the rest, I’ll stick with the library.

That said I travel the world as a suitcase entrepreneur and right now with 8 books in my case it’s a big weight I don’t need.

So I’m likely going to get a Kindle or hang on to the iPad I bought to sell here in Buenos Aires and install the Kindle app!

I buy quite a few eBooks – mainly from bloggers I respect and admire and I like the format of having them to hand, to cut and paste ideas from and refer back to.

At the end of the day I’m willing to pay for quality of ideas and for the author’s efforts. Anyone who writes a book deserves that much!

Natalie

I just recently got the NookColor – amazing product. An advantage with Nooks is that you can electronically borrow books from your local library (assuming it supports ereaders and most seem to now) for FREE! So that pretty much takes the cost issue out of the equation. Add in the advantage of Google Books and Project Gutenberg and the thousands of book you can download for free you can read and read and read all at no cost!!

I’ve downloaded a couple of new releases but I rarely bought books as new releases anyway so by using the free resources I’m finding tons (downloaded 75 so far in three weeks) all at no cost.

Another plus with the Nook (I think you can do this with Kindle too) is that you can have up to five Nooks on an account. So if I download a book my wife sees it show up on her Nook – no extra cost! No more waiting for each other to finish the latest novel!

You can only imagine how much space I’m saving having my Lonely Planet travel guides on the Nook. AND, check this out, with the Nook Color you can make notes, bookmark, etc., all those key travel highlights and come right back to them. (you can do that with any book by the way, but I’m loving the application for tying together all the travel advice…)

Just another kudos to the Nook Color – you can download full color magazines (I like Natl Geo’s Travel) and newspapers – very slick. Great way to stay current without the hassle of newsprint. I wake up every morning and my Wall Street Journal has already been delivered to my Nook Color!

To Deb@106 – having ebooks is actually safer than paper books. I had a fire a few years ago – lost everything I owned, including a library worth over $50k. With a Nook all those books are also saved on my online account. If my Nook goes belly up I just connect a new one and viola – all the books are back.

Please don’t get me wrong, I’ll never give up paper books – I love the feel, smell, and the reward of the favorites in my library but I have to say that the ereader definitely has a place in my life.

To b@51 – actually you can share books, both with the way I’ve mentioned above and with the Nook they have a cool “lend me” feature that allows you to electronically lend books to others for up to 14 days.

The day I bought it, I downloaded thousands of classics. After moving from another country, classics were the first things I left behind, and it was incredibly easy to find both French and English classics, that I downloaded extremely fast. For classics, I say ebooks are the way to go, be it only because they offer me choice. There is no way I could have all these books at home if they were not ebooks.
Now if I feel like reading, I can choose from a huge number of books, and there is always something I feel like reading. I love that.

Because I am a bit OCD, and while e-readers typically have a huge memory, I like sorting my books on SD cards, in categories (by author, or genre, or type, for instance comics or non-fiction or poetry, etc). Then I print labels for these cards and carry them in a SD card pouch (it would take four of them to reach the size of one book, and each can hold up to thousands of books)
For me, it recreates the experience of physically looking through your library and picking a book, which I prefer over scrolling through titles.

Ebooks are also practical for huge books or book series. I have Les Misérables on a single ebook, for instance, which is 2,500 pages long. No way I could carry that along with me. And while you might think you wouldn’t /need/ to carry it along, you might be surprised: I’ve already read it twice since getting it two years ago, and neither time was planned.

I also like reading webcomics on my reader, as I find it more comfortable than on a computer screen, and I can do it offline. You do lose colour on coloured comics, and the screen doesn’t allow for big sized comics easily (there is a zoom but I’d rather not have to use it).
I’ve also heard of people using their readers to read fanfiction or blogs, they download it all in the morning and read it on the bus or during the day.

Another thing I really like my reader for is library books. While they don’t have as big a selection, you get the book instantaneously on your reader, and then it expires. No need to return it or go get it, and in winter here when the weather can reach -40 degrees, it’s appreciated.

Quite honestly, I have never bought anything I read on my reader. Every book I have read on it was free (either public domain or a library book). So for me, the only cost has been the reader itself and the electricity (which, without wifi, is ridiculously low).

So I would say it saved me money. It saved me money on late fees on the library, and on free domain books that would probably have cost a few bucks each (I haven’t read all of them, but I have read a few hundreds by now).

But mostly, it’s more practical. Often the books I read probably didn’t actually save me money because I otherwise wouldn’t have read them. But reading is something I love doing so I’m definitely happy to be able to do it again.

In the end, I recommend it for free material or people who travel a lot.

This whole ebooks discussion reminds me of why I’m annoyed at the whole marketplace. When I bought books on cassette, the market moved to compact disks; rebougfht some. I’ve bought and rebought music (i.e.:records, 8 track, cassettes, disc). Now, books that used to be on paper that I bought, I’m now expected to rebuy my favorites on one or more reader platforms.

Sorry, that ain’t going to happen. I’m tired of getting screwed.

On top of that, I have found it soothing to play text-to-speech (it isn’t quite as horrible as the very early computerized voices) while reading because it focuses the mental and visual aspects of learning.

Since I tend to read classics, I feel that my Kindle will continue to pay me back for years. (I got it used and don’t have the zest for upgrade. I’ll run mine until it stops working.)

But when version Older of an e-Reader is replaced with version Newer, where do the older models end up? In Chinese landfills, masquerading as “electronic recycling.”

Pushing our environmental problem onto other people doesn’t make us environmentally friendly.

I read mostly fiction, and when I pick up a book, it is to take a break from technology. From my computer screen, or smartphone screen, or television screen. I find that we spend so much time in front of ‘screens’, and I don’t want to take the only thing left, reading, away from my life.

I’m sorry, but if you imagine reading on a Sunday on the couch with a cup of tea, are you reading on an electronic device? NO!

That said, for my experience e-books are great for the sheer purpose of reading for information and sometimes entertainment. Yet an e-book gives a different experience than reading a paper or hard back book. I have books that are just pleasant to hold – be it for the glossiness of the paper, the intense colors of the illustrations, perhaps raised lettering on the cover, the size or shape of the books, or even an excellence in the method of binding. I often like to highlight or mark a line or two so I can look at it later – and I like the tactile experience of uncapping the highlighter and rubbing it over the favored line. I even like looking at them on the shelf, or showing a page or two to someone when we are discussing something related to the book.

As for the e-books: the ability to quickly find a book, search for a phrase, or even to carry around many books at once – these are all good.

I don’t see e-books replacing regular books for myself. I see them as a supplement or a convenience, sometimes as an enhancement. That said, I wouldn’t give up my e-books any easier than I’d give up my other books. I’ll take both, thank you.

I live in a small apartment, and I never kept books I wasn’t going to re-read–still, my TBR stack took up quite a bit of room, and my books to be donated or sold took up even more. It was a great relief to free up this shelf space permanently.

I much prefer my e-reader to a paper book. Unlike JD, I do dare to take it in the tub. I made a nice case for it, so I can haul it anywhere without fear. My cat loves the fact that I can read one-handed.

My big plus is the instant book-buying. I didn’t think about how great that would be until I had it, now I don’t know if I would want to live without it.

My husband has since inherited my first Kindle, and I now have the latest edition, with even nicer contrast and better font control. He was skeptical at first, but he now reads mostly on his Kindle, including taking it on the bus. We both have the Gutenberg catalog on our Kindles, so we have instant access to tons of stuff, which the husband loves.

Links:
Books on the Knob covers free books for several e-readers:
http://booksontheknob.blogspot.com/
Daily Cheap Reads concentrates on books under $5, but usually cheaper:
http://dailycheapreads.com/
Kindle Nation Daily has Kindle news, and a complete listing of free books:
http://kindlehomepage.blogspot.com/