Physical Books vs.. Ebooks

I just want to talk about the pros and cons with both physical books and e-readers. Yes, both of them have pros and cons. I’m going to start with the pros and cons of physical books and then continue on to e-readers.

Physical books have been produced for a long time now and are still being produced today. In fact the reason why we have physical books is thanks in part to the printing press invented by Johanne Gutenberg.

This man invented the printing press in the 1450s. The first book ever created by his printing press or as otherwise known “movable type” was a latin language Bible which was printed in Mainz, Germany. Anyway, without this invention, physical books would never have been produced the way we know them today. Before Gutenberg’s invention we had scribes that would handwrite from their bibles from cover to cover, and as such maybe not be highly accurate. So, as you can see, technology always will have its perks.

Of course the arguments at that time of Gutenberg, was the same as the arguments towards e-readers now. The arguments ranged from “Movable type is impossible!” “This printing press you make will ruin the book writing industry!” and etc. etc….

Physical books of today are now made on a computer and sent to either an offset printing press or a digital printing press to be made. (I’ll talk about the difference between these two industries in another video.) After physical books are produced, they are generally sold in stores around the country or even around the world.

Physical books have that uniqueness to them when you hold one in your hands. To me it does anyway. There is just something about the smell of paper that holds magic for me. It’s a unique smell that you can’t get with an e-reader. You also have the ability to know exactly what page you’re on and if you need to flip back to see what chapter you are currently reading you can do so. The downsides of physical books are that it will get heavy especially if you are reading it at night before bed or maybe carrying it in your pack on your travels. You may end up dropping it on your chest a few times. I’ve done that on occasion. The other downside is that if you are reading in the dark, you have to attack a book light and that gets rather annoying. Still, physical books are a great asset to your library and should not be so easily discarded.

When it comes to e-readers there is a lot of stigma attached to them. I personally don’t see what the problems with e-readers are. There are actually many benefits to owning an e-reader. Some people claim they don’t like to read on a screen. That’s a valid argument. Still, I think the regular kindle reader solves that problem. When I read on a regular kindle screen it is like looking at paper to me and so I have no problem with it. The Kindle fire on the other hand, I can see validity in the argument of not wanting to read a book on a screen. The pros of reading on an e-reader are the following: e-readers aren’t as heavy as physical books, you can download books directly to your e-reader, you can read work from authors who may not be published mainstream, and you have your own portable library which takes up less space than physical books do. Of course, the cons are you don’t get to see your page numbers since the kindle goes by percentage, the unique smell of books you don’t get in an e-reader, you may still need a book light depending on which version of e-reader you have.

Okay, I believe I listed the pros and cons of both physical books and e-readers as well as gave a history lesson on the printing press. I personally feel that physical books and e-readers go hand in hand.

There is just one argument about e-readers that I would like to debunk in this video. A few months ago I was hanging out with some people, who were trying to be writers. Well, I hope they succeed in their endeavors but I do feel that they were wrong about something. Those two people had a high disdain for e-readers and I asked why. I was shocked when they said that e-readers caused their favorite bookstore Borders to go out of business. Borders was my own favorite book store before it went out of business, but I know it isn’t e-readers that put borders out of business. What made borders go out of business was the fact that Barnes and Noble bought all of their stocks. Barnes and Noble also incorporated e-readers into their store chains and as such had a higher turnout on the business scale. So yes, although Borders was one of my own favorite book stores I understand why they went out of business and no, it isn’t because of e-readers though that does play a small factor.