With today’s ease with technology, ebooks are easily available online. However, even so, a majority of the world still seem to prefer physical books. According to the Association of American Publishers, eBooks continued to decline, down 4.2% as compared to 2018 for a total of $983.3 million.
Taken collectively, physical books – Hardback, Board Book, Paperback and Mass Market – accounted for $5.8 billion, or 74.0% of total 2019 Trade. Thus, physical books are still prominent amongst readers. It is however uncertain whether or not this winning streak in favour of physical books would continue as the appeal of ebooks augments overtime.
The appeal of E-books
Firstly, compared to physical books, ebooks are generally a lot cheaper due to the omission of financial burdens such as printing and shipping. Ebooks are also without burden of damaging the environment as trees aren’t required for paper.
Moreover, unlike physical books, ebooks are a lot lighter to carry around. Take the Kindle for example.
From The Book Buff, a Kindle is a device that is specifically designed for reading books and magazines. It has a long battery life (of a few weeks on a single charge) and comes with a proprietary electronic-ink (e-ink) display that mimics the reading experience of a book or paper. According to Book Summary Club, an 8GB Kindle can in itself hold about 2000-3000 books on your device.
This is all at a much cheaper price of about a hundred dollars in comparison to physical books.
What’s more, you may read ebooks in the dark unlike physical books where a light source is quintessential. This is awesome for night owls who prefer reading at night in the comfort of their sheets.
So, why are more people in favour of physical books?
As someone who prefers physical books over ebooks, I would never be able to rub off my love of holding open a book, flipping its pages and breathing in the fresh smell of paper. Furthermore, I would not be accused by parents of “using my phone” too much.
As it has nothing digital related to physical books, I need not worry about any device suddenly running out of battery nor need I worry about distractions. When reading online, I usually have notifications incoming and that prevents me from fully indulging in the story. On physical books, it provides me with an excuse to completely disappear from the world.
However, the biggest reason of all is so that I can boast of my book collection to others. The satisfaction brought about when I look at my collection of books read is incomparable to simply glancing at a “digital library”.
I suppose these might be a few of the multitude of reasons people prefer physical books to digital books.
To end off, are you Team Physical Books or Team Digital Books?
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