I'm surprised by the amount of -- dare I call it -- snobbishness about eBooks in the thread.
Is the argument being made one of terminology as well as/instead of reading preference? By that I mean, do people want eBooks to be called something without the 'book' part (see Bick's definition above), or is it a deeper dislike, of the actual media itself?
Romantically, I prefer a paperback (never been a fan of hardbacks but that's a different issue); the somatic part of turning a page, the physical presence, the smell, the artwork, and the somewhat hoarding of it on my bookshelves. It's so hardwired into my emotional memory that it's perhaps more than the sum of its parts. I love it when I read an OOP or pulp paperback from the Seventies or Eighties and there is that extra material at the back where you can purchase other books by sending an SAE (I recall the Fontana horror books and other pulps did this often and the child me used to marvel at the titles and imagine what they might be).
But as I have got older (and broke-r), and as a freelance teacher, I've shifted almost exclusively to eBooks. I travel between 1.5 - 4 hours per day depending on the school and I've really noticed a great more ease carrying my Kindle around which now has well over one hundred books on it (I've had it nerly 3 years -- I'm a slow reader). I nearly didn't finish Justin Cronin's
The Passage or Mark Danielewski's
House of Leaves, because they were so cumbersome to carry about (the latter would be impossible to read on a Kindle due to its maverick style). I have H P Lovecraft's
Necronomicon collection (the common black hardback with gold embossing edition) but when I was given a Kindle I bought it again as an eBook because it was a hateful size to carry, and awkward to read at home, too.
Kindle books are far cheaper -- I was delighted with the 99p that Dickens' entire catalogue cost me when I was researching for one of my novels (
Hard Times, in particular), although I think Du Maurier's
Rebecca cost me nearly the same as the solid copy.
In addition, I have recently been referred to specialist for a series of tests regarding ADHD which has a massive variety of spectrum depending on the sufferer, and some of mine seem to be kinesthetic (possibly dyspraxia) as well as purely executive mental functioning. What this means for me is a Kindle can make a massive difference to my reading experience. For example, as an ADHDer, when I read a term I don't know in a paperback, I can be engrossed in the narrative, but a little voice is nagging me to find out what the word is. This would mean putting the book down, going online and finding out, then coming back to the book, by which time my concentration will need refocusing, I may have seen something else (ooh, shiny!) and become distracted.
Then there's the other way, which is to try and ignore the word, parsing it from context, but four pages later realise I've not been paying attention as my mind's been constantly chattering redundantly about whether or not I should get off my backside and look for a definition of the term. It's torture.
On an eReader, I just tap the word/term and it opens up a dictionary or Wiki and there you go. A lot less risk of distraction.
Then there's the immediacy. As a neurodivergent, my mood can be capricious when starting a new book. I could go to Foyles with the lads and by the time I get home, not 'feel' the book. As an eBook I can buy it instantly, and if it turns out a poor choice for my mood, I can buy another if I wish.
Flicking back and forth between chapters or pages, saving bookmarks on passages I need/want to refer to later in the book is a cinch. Sure you can do this on a physical book, but it's easier and quicker on my Kindle.
Star reviews on a Kindle is easier, too. By linking it to your Goodreads account, you are asked at the end of the book if you'd like to give it a star rating. I think it may be possible to write one on the Kindle, too, but that seems like it would be awful cumbersome and unpleasant to do.
And lastly (for now), my eyesight is failing and I can't afford to replace my specs yet, so being able to increase the text size is wonderful. No more headaches after a reading marathon. But it's crucial to note that a paper-effect eReader is what you want. Reading from an iPad or iPhone etc will give you sore eyes from glare. A Kindle paperwhite only does what it needs to, it can be read in bright sun with ease, just as proper book, and at night when I read in bed for an hour or so, I can use the dark mode which allows you to fall asleep as you're reading (the auto-off means you won't lose your place -- another great feature.)
The drawbacks: When it comes to artwork. I recently bought the illustrated edition of Bram Stoker's Dracula and a Kindle is just not up to that, fidelity-wise or colour-wise. I'd not buy a coffee table book in Kindle, of course, but sometimes there are nice illustrations (King's
Dark Tower series, for example) and it'd be nice to see them.
There do seem to be more errors in eBooks. I was complaining to my sister (she used to be a Waterstones manager in the Manchester branch) that Stephen King's
Revival had typos and she said it was something to do with the process of encoding. I wasn't too clear on that as some of them were homophones, but there you go.
With a bookshelf, you can pick out a book instantly to read, whereas on a Kindle, you have a poor swipe haptic and latency is an issue, too. There are filters to sort various criteria, but it's clumsy. Also, the cover of a hard copy will often act as a memory jog for what the book is about, particularly in anthologies, but on a Kindle, this isn't feasible.
The annotations by other readers. One thing that I intensely dislike is when there is a tiny superscript annotation that says '103 notations', meaning 103 other readers have noted that line. It's intrusive inasmuch as it pulls you from the narrative and makes you pay attention to the prose's technicality rather than it being an invisible means to the story. You can turn these off, as I have, but it seems some still seem to get through.
Battery life could be a drawback, but so far I only have had to charge my Kindle every three weeks which I think is pretty acceptable this side of a global apocalypse.
Sharing a book is impossible. Lending a paperback is almost a British tradition, or at least a tradition for bookworms, so being unable to pass on a book I've loved is a pain.
But, I think my biggest problem is this: I hate being tied to such an unethical company as Amazon. Even if I got a Kobo or other model of eReader, I would be tied to certain producers. Perhaps as importantly, as a writer, and buyer of my author friends' books, I'd be spending less on titles than if I bought a hard copy. In those circumstances (i.e Chrons authors) I try to by the hard copy.
And then, speaking of Chronners and hard copies, for people like
@Jo Zebedee who have their own physical bookshop --
The Secret Bookshelf - Jo Zebedee -- it's undercutting them if local buyers go to Amazon. If Amazon wasn't such a monopoliser, we'd have a trading situation where physical bookshops could at least get in on that, and sell eBooks to their customers somehow. Maybe through some kind of licensing or franchising(?)
That was a lot longer than I'd intended to write, but as you can see it's an intractable situation, and I suspect, a generational one.
