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5 Reasons E-Books Are Better Than Books
- 08/18/10
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Yesterday I gave you 5 Reasons Books Are Better Than E-Books. Today I want to follow that up with 5 ways in which e-books are superior to their printed counterparts. I suspect you will note some lack of passion in my attempt to do so. I truly do love books and I suppose I give respect to e-books only grudgingly. Nevertheless, I can’t in good consience pretend there are no ways in which e-books have the upper hand.
So here they are, 5 ways in which e-books are better than books:
1. Searchability
I have not counted the volumes in my library, but I suspect I have about 1,000 books lining the walls around me (and I keep it around that level, throwing out one book for every new book I add). That is 1,000 books full of information, but information that can only be accessed by physically picking up the book and looking through its pages. To search those 1,000 books would require picking up each one of them and looking for an index, hoping that the word I am searching for is appropriately indexed within. Minor words, unimportant words, would not appear at all. If I want to remember the content of these books, I need to rely on memory and allow it to guide me to a book and then memory or some kind of an index to lead me to a chapter and a page. It’s all quite inconvenient and old fashioned.
Where e-books maintain one great advantage is in their searchability. Though not all e-reading programs or devices support it, in theory at least, I should be able to perform a search and quickly find a word or term within my entire library. When I use Logos to access commentaries, I find the results very different from accessing those same commentaries in their printed versions; the results are faster and the results are more complete.
E-books allow me to search my entire library with a depth and convenience that cannot be matched by printed books. They also allow me to search within a particular book very quickly and easily and, again, at great depth. In both cases this can be very, very useful and is a feature printed books simply cannot match.
Of course for this feature to reach its potential, we will need search technology to continue to improve and, on an even more basic level, we will need more programs to allow us to perform searches across an entire e-book library. Such functionality is a given; it is not a question of if but when.
2. Portability
The 1,000 books I have in my library take up a lot of space and weigh hundreds of pounds. I shudder to think about moving some day and having to take those books from their shelves and placing them in boxes, hauling them down a flight of stairs and into a truck (and then back again on the other end). With the joy that comes through carrying a physical, tactile object like a book comes the inconvenience of its size and weight. As many airport security folk can tell you, I like to travel with a lot of books, but even if I pack my suitcase to its weight limit, I can still bring only a very small part of my library.On the other hand, a digital library is infinitely portable, taking up no physical space whatsoever. I can take it with me wherever I want, those 1,000 volumes each accessible on my iPhone or any other device.
3. Versatility
My electronic library travels with me, in full, wherever I go (or wherever I have an Internet connection, at least) but it is also accessible across many different media. On my Kindle, iPad, iPod, iPhone, PC or Mac I can access every e-book I’ve purchased from Amazon and can access the notes and highlights I’ve made for each. When I go away for a week’s vacation I do not need to choose five or six books to take with me, hoping that they are the right ones or the best ones; I can take my entire library and know that the book will be available to me. In this way e-books offer a great deal of versatility. I can even convert some of them to audio books by allowing Kindle’s reading app to read them aloud to me. I can increase font sizes when the light is dim or move from a backlit screen to an e-ink screen when my eyes are tired.
4. Preservation
Last year I flew to a conference on the other side of the continent and, before I left, I purchased a great new book. I had read three quarters of that book by the end of the flight and was enjoying it a lot. I was rather distressed to find that I had inadvertently left it on the plane, stuffed in the pocket ahead of me. Because I wanted to finish the book, I went to a local bookstore to buy a second copy. Had I purchased the e-book instead of the physical book, I would not have had to do this; I could not have lost it at all since something that takes up no space cannot truly be lost! Of course I could have left my entire device on the plane, a far bigger disaster, but let’s not go there. The fact is that I cannot lose or misplace an e-book. If I can no longer find the file, I can simply download it again. It’s never gone, never lost.
And that’s not all. I will never drop an e-book in the bathtub and will never find that my dog has eaten it or my daughter has spilled a glass of milk on it. It won’t tear or bend or fall out of its binding. My house can burn down and my library will be undamaged. It will be as fresh ten years from now as it is today. The notes I take will be preserved on my device and in the cloud, forever accessible should I want to retrace my steps and recall what I loved and hated about the book.
5. Cost
Because e-books take up no space in warehouses and require no shipping, because they have no physical presence and require no raw materials, they can be sold (and are sold) at much lower costs than printed books. A person who buys the new Kindle at $139 and switches from books to e-books will very quickly repay his investment. This will take longer with a “deluxe” device like the iPad, but even then a person who purchases a lot of books will be able to justify the hardware investment by looking at the savings that will come in purcashing books. All-in-all e-books allow us to own more books for less money. Book lovers find that difficult to resist.
Convenience
If we were to summarize these five benefits of e-books in a single word, I think the best word would be convenience. E-books offer a level of convenience that allows us to search them easily, to take a lot of them with us wherever we go, to keep them safe and to buy more of them for less. What e-books offer is not revolutionary, but evolutionary. They haven’t given us something entirely new—they’ve given us something that tries to do books even better.
I want to say a little bit more about all of this, but I am not going to do that today. Stay tuned tomorrow or Friday and I will tell you why I remain concerned about e-books despite their obvious conveniences.
I am a follower of Jesus Christ, a husband to Aileen and a father to three young children. I worship and serve as a pastor at 
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Comments (29)
Tim,
If you add your library to http://books.google.com, you will have the ability to search through all of the books that Google has catalogued. It’s obviously not as convenient as searching on a Kindle, but it’s a very helpful resource for people like myself who really, really like paper books and don’t like e-books.
I am interested to see the next few posts Tim. My mom called me last week and asked if I wanted a Kindle for Christmas. My first reaction was yes, for most of the reasons you stated here. But after talking with my wife about it all, I realized that while more convenient for searching and carrying, I lost one huge impact that I have with my books, freedom to share. Now when I buy books and I read them, if I like them I give them to my wife or my son to check out. If someone is having a certain issue at church or other realms I can hand them a book. I know one day in the future everyone may have portable readers and maybe even have 3 or 4 in a house to switch around for such a thing. But for now I realized me getting a Kindle limited the impact of the books I love.A book I truly love as of now has the opportunity to be read by as many as I can give it to (and get it back :)). Plus my books are my most treasured item outside of the key things (Christ, Family,Church) and something I ,one day, want to hand down to my children. I look forward to your next posts…
Tim, How do you decide which books to buy a physical copy of and which books to buy in e-book form?
I wish more publishers would offer an electronic copy of a book at no or minimal additional cost with the purchase of the print version of a book. For commentaries and other such reference works, I would find that very useful.
Tim,
I’ll admit that e-books have some advantages over printed books. But I’d like to play the DA here for a minute.
1. Searchability - No question, this is a great feature of e-books. A possible downside is that this feature may encourage people to read sentences and paragraphs out of their larger context. But overall, e-books win hands down on this one.
2. Portability - True, e-books can be carried around with you. But as far as I know, they can’t be loaned to friends. I currently have multiple printed books loaned out to friends. Similarly, I’ve received hundreds of books as gifts, and I’ve given many books as gifts. Somehow giving someone an electronic gift card to Amazon isn’t the same as giving them a physical book that you’ve inscribed. I’d really miss this loan/gift “feature” of printed books.
3. Versatility - Seems like e-books win on this one though I question whether or not it is wise for people to have constant access to the internet via portable devices.
4. Preservation - If you can ruin a printed book by dropping it in the bathtub you can certainly ruin an e-reader by doing the same. Or do you feel less comfortable using an e-reader in the bathtub? Hmmm. Does this mean it’s less portable/versatile? Also, you mention the idea that your e-books will be around ten years from now in perfect condition. Maybe. But off the top of my head, I can’t think of any electronic device that I currently own that I owned ten years ago. In fact, I can only think of one or two that I still have that I owned five years ago. Today’s e-readers will certainly be obsolete ten years from now. You may still have access to your e-books on some yet uninvented device ten years from now. But do you really think you’ll have access to these same e-books thirty years from now? I’m not so sure. File types change. And thirty years from now we’ll almost certainly not be using Word docxs, pdfs, or many other file types currently in use. Perhaps it will be possible to convert today’s e-books into whatever format will be in use thirty years from now, but will it be possible to do so for free? How do printed books compare? I sit in an office surrounded by books. Most of them are fairly new. Some are 100 years old or more.
5. Cost - E-books may be the winner here. But once replacing broken, lost, or obsolete e-readers is figured in (several people I know are already on their second or third e-reader) and the cost of possibly needing to repurchase e-books because technology has changed is accounted for, the winner is less clear.
I’ll be interested to read your concerns about e-readers later in the week…when I read your blog on my (umm…) laptop. : )
I choose to generally and irrationally disagree with you and resist the inevitable changes which will one day be forced upon me whether I like them or not.
How easy is it to read multiple books at once on an e-reader i.e. as one might do when researching? I frequently have 3 or 4 text books with detailed diagrams plus a number of research papers. I have yet to see an e-reader that effectively supports this style of work.
Another benefit to e books is that for someone with limited vision one can increase the font size to whatever works for one.
Another disadvantage to having an e-book is the ability to mark up the pages and right notes in the margins.
write*
…I’m sure it won’t be long until this (the ability to mark, highlight, etc.) will become a reality
I love ebooks and read them on my iPhone 4 (whose screen is so fantastic and clear that the size is a non-issue). My problem is an odd one though- ebooks make me buy books. I don’t LIKE to buy books. I like to borrow books from the library or friends. Some people treasure book ownership, but I see the library as conveniently storing thousands of books for me so that I don’t have to, and my taxes pay for them. I long for the day that there is a system where I can check out ebooks and read them on a Kindle or iOS device, or even “rent” them for $1 or $2 a week.
@ Dave B
the Nook has the ability to share with others
Good day… :)
I mentioned your blog in my post “Around the Web in 80 days-blogs”
Here is a direct link:http://www.dereksdiscourse.com/2010/08/around-web-in-80-days-blogs.html
Have a terrific day, and keep up the amazing work.
-derek-
I will never drop an e-book in the bathtub…
See, I see this point as part of why I prefer dead tree editions to e-books. If I drop a book in the bathtub, I’m out $5 - $25. If I drop an e-book reader in the bathtub, I’m out the much higher price of the reader and (depending on how things are stored) maybe some of the e-books too.
I’m glad someone else mentioned the e—reader advantage of being able to increase the font size. I have limited vision and there are several books that I simply cannot read. Most Christian publishers do not offer a large print version of their books. One of the first things I do when I hear about a book I might want to read is to find an actual copy of the book to see what the font size is. I will never buy the ESV Study Bible because it is impossible to read. As such, if I ever get a Kindle, I will probably only buy e-books for which the actual book is hard for me to read.
I have started using a Kobo e-reader for e-books and am quite enjoying it. Unlike laptops, iPhones, etc, it is really easy on the eyes (quite comparable to actual print) and it doesn’t allow for multi-tasking (which I consider a benefit of the device - all you can do is read the book).
That said, I am primarily using the device for novels, not reference work. I see the lack of being able to flip around through the text easily is a big drawback in my mind. I’ve even noticed this with novels … there have been a couple times where I would’ve flipped back to an earlier chapter to clarify something, but with the e-book it seemed to cumbersome to attempt.
A big advantage for me is the availability of free, public domain works. Prior to this device I had started purchasing the odd classic to read for entertainment, but now I have access to all these great old works for free (the Kobo comes with 100 titles, for example).
Also, some libraries are now offering e-books that you can “borrow” via a download from their website. The Calgary Public Library, for example, allows you to borrow e-books for 21 days.
You’re right. Convenience is key. Case in point… I’ve made it my goal this year to read the ESV Study Bible cover to cover during my daily devotional time. As I was getting ready to go on vacation, however, I couldn’t see myself lugging along that massive tome. I use the online version of the ESV Study Bible regularly, but I was going to places without internet access. I decided to try out the epub version of the ESV Study Bible - only $15 an incredible deal. It runs a little slow on my Sony Reader, but it is extremely convenient. Even the maps and charts show up fairly well. I don’t think e-books will ever replace hard copies, but they’re a great option for certain situations.
As you said yesterday, an e-book is only “yours” in a lesser sense than a real book, and you mentioned the recent example of Amazon snapping up the novel 1984 (of all titles!) from its e-book readers. You are essentially paying merely for access. Maybe it is my paranoia, but in this day and age, am I willing to trust all my reading to what may or not be allowed by, for instance, Amazon or my public library? Of course, in the meantime…. I could just enjoy both. However, by the time any problems arise, the ever ballyhooed “end of publishing” may have actually come true.
You haven’t mentioned a potential advantage for Bible study:
Often commentaries and Systematic Theology books have lots of Bible references, or refer the reader to other locations in the book. It takes a lot of time to look up all those references. I think it is a major benefit to have an electronic version with hyperlinks, so that you can hover over the Bible reference and quickly read the passage, in order to see the scripture the author is using to support his point. I know Logos and other Bible-based readers support this feature.
I would also be interested when you like a physical book vs. when you like an e-book.
It’s been alluded to, but an enormous advantage of e-books is the free content. More than half of what’s on my Kindle was free to me - both new releases on promotion and items out of copyright.
As for loaning the e-book, I believe the Barnes and Noble Nook does let you loan your book to a friend for 30 days.
Do people really read in the bathtub?
One big advantage of eBooks: Out of print books are available digitally. Theological classics from the Princeton Seminary Library (for instance) are available fo download and viewing ina variety of formats. Go to www.archive.org and look around.
People absolutely read in the bathtub! I place my Nook in a Ziploc baggie when I take it to the tub. Works like a charm and I don’t have to worry about it going overboard! Love this set of posts. Lots of good angles to ponder.
I would like to add “Avaliability”. Since I live in Hong Kong, most English Christian books are not as conveniently available in the “local book stores”. For example, they surely don’t have “The Discipline of Spiritual Discernment” being sold here! The case is far worse in mainland China.
However, with the Kindle device, I am sure I can get the latest book that could enrich my spirituality. Of course, you could argue that I can buy the book from Amazon and ship it here, but as I know, Amazon doesn’t ship everywhere and it takes more time and money to do it.
On the side line, I want to add that the western world is blessed with a huge library of Christian books that cannot be parallelled by any other language. And using Kindle I can tap into the rich spiritual resources of the English language-using Christian community. Of course, in our Chinese culture, we do have plenty of Christian resources which I would rather prefer to read by physical book.
You can share in a limited way, like in your family. Have them install the free Kindle program on their Mac or PC, or Kindle app on their iPhone or iPod Touch (and maybe other devices), log into your account and download and read the books…
I have the ESV study bible on my iPod and iPad and it is fantastic, and yes, you can increase the font size. You can set the font face and vary the font size from 8 to 39 points. Get it from olivetree.com. You download the free Biblereader app and then purchase the ESV study bible for (I think) around $30. My wife has the leather-bound version but I prefer the electronic. It has the full text/pictures/charts/etc. of the ESV study bible notes along with the ESV bible. I like to split the display and show them side-by-side when studying a verse, very convenient.
Thanks for this article. I like the idea of ebooks. I have about 3000 volumes in my library. I probably have about 100 favorites. After searching for about 25 of my top 100, I was able to find 3 books from Charles Ryrie. There are 3 others which will be available soon from Logos, “Grace Commentary on the NT.” The Bible I use most is the NKJV, Nelson Study Bible. It is not available in e-books. I hope all my Greek & Hebrew tools are available. My favorite Concordance (Youngs) is not available.It seems like there are hardly any books I use regularly which are available yet. I clicked on the “Tell the Publisher I’d like to read this title on Kindle” for all of the ones I would like to buy.I have been photocopying a lot of my favorite chapters and hand them out to my Bible Study groups.I wonder how they choose which ones to do? Is it up to the author to supply the e-version or does the Publisher do it?- Don Reiher
You already can highlight and take notes on the Kindle. As well, they are saved on Amazon’s website for easy access, which I then put into a Word doc.
I’m beginning to wonder what’s going to happen to printed music if books are to be “phased out” . . . I wonder if they will have some sort of special music reader?And won’t they need to be awkwardly large so they are actually readable … And what will music stands need to look like? Or, are they just going make digitized music stands?
All of the resulting possibilities for the future … are nigh endless.
Dan @ #4 -YES! YES!! YES!!!!!
and Matthews @ #11 - I’m totally with you on “renting” e-book content.
Will marketers / distributors ever bring either of these into reality, do you think?