Nine Ways Paper Books Are Better Than E-Books

So, my dear friend, The Cheeky Ginger, has been all over town posting this:

9 Ways Ebooks Are Better Than Paper Books

Here's the link if you'd care to read her thoughts on the matter:

http://cheekyginger.com/9-ways-ebooks-are-better-than-paper-books/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheCheekyGinger+%28The+Cheeky+Ginger%29

I'm not sure why you'd want to, though, because, well....she's just wrong, even though she does state very quietly at the end that paper books do have advantages.

Well, folks, here they are.

Nine Ways Paper Books Are Better Than E-Books

1. You don't have to wait to turn them on. Sometimes you are just waiting around. For a phone call, a commercial to be over, the doctor to call you into his office. These are the perfect times to open a book. If you have a paper book you can quickly get to your spot and read a bit. If you have an e-book you have to wait until it turns on, cutting down on valuable reading time.

2. You don't have to turn your paper book off on a plane. Planes are a fantastic time for reading. Especially for that horrible amount of time you have to wait to take off and land. What's better to fill that time than reading. But you CAN'T if you have an e-book.

3. You don't have to charge a paper book. I often walk around with books. How can I do that while it's charging? Charging takes valuable time. And it keeps you stuck in one place. What if you're in the middle of something really good and you have to charge? No thanks. On another note (which really should have it's own category but I have so many reasons I have to condense to make nine), when traveling to foreign countries you may not be able to charge your e-book. You have to get an adapter and hope it works. I took my Kindle to London thinking it would be so great to travel. I purchased a very expensive adapter. I plugged in my $300 flat iron. It exploded. So I didn't dare plug in my Kindle. So the first thing I had to do in London was find a book. Annoying.

4. Book covers. Book covers can be gorgeous works of art. You can use them to decorate. How can you decorate with a bunch of files?

5. Book stores. Book stores are amazing places. You can judge books by their cover, pick them up and do a quick perusal of the contents, and potentially find the book of your dreams. Also, please see reason number 6 below. The smell is amazing. You can encounter books, magazines, even toys. You can often get coffee. It's a reason to get out of the house. It's social. You talk to people.

6. Variety. I am keeping this separate from number 5 because I think it's very important. Browsing virtual book stores is very overwhelming. And often they will give you suggestions based on past purchases. But if you do that you may not find something special, something different, something that caught your attention at a book store. And that special thing may be your new favorite book.

7. There's a lot of self-published crap in e-books. Don't get me wrong. I'm all for self-publishing if you want. But the fact that it's SO much easier to self-publish due to e-books means that there's a whole lot more crap to wade through. I don't want to wade through that much crap.

8. You can pass on books to others. If there's a book you treasure you can pass it on. It's like giving someone a gift. And they can wade through the pages like you did, getting immersed in it. It's a physical connection.

9. Paper books create jobs and are better for the economy. It takes a lot to make a books. Just in the manufacturing alone you have people who have to do the layout, make the paper, create the cover, print the book, bind the book, set up the machines to do all of the above, pack the books, ship the books. Then you have all of the book store jobs, all of the publishing jobs. That's a lot of jobs. Books are good for the economy.

So there you have it. Books will always, always be better than e-books. (And if you don't buy them you are destroying the economy and you hate America. So there.)