EBOOK vs PHYSICAL BOOK

It's a constant battle, this. Real book versus e-book. A lot of you have requested this discussion over the years and I've always put it off. Mainly because initially I didn't actually have an e-reader and I was kind of like, no, I probably won't ever get an e-reader. But obviously things have changed because I now own a Kindle 3G keyboard. So now that I have had the opportunity to experience reading on an e-reader, I thought I would finally tackle this discussion and let's see. Let's see what I prefer. Price. Now talking about standard retail price, physical books are usually more expensive than e-books. So talking about retail price, this one probably wins. However, there are the exceptions. I have about 400 books on here that were free. Completely free. Real books you can also get for free from the library. And for both, you can often get them for a couple of dollars depending on where you buy them from, like second-hand bookstores, if they're ridiculously on sale, things like that. So as for price, I don't usually take that into account when I'm looking at a book. The thing is, I have trouble with letting myself buy e-books if they're about $10. I just, I can't, I can't make myself spend that much money on a digital copy of a book. Especially after going on such a rampage and obtaining hundreds of books for free. So when it comes to buying e-books, I only get them if they're like up to like $3-$4. So if there is a book that I've been kind of wanting to buy and it goes on sale, it's part of the daily deals, I will buy it instantly. Because getting an e-book for like $1.99 is awesome. So if an e-book isn't on sale, I usually just buy the physical book because if I get it from the book depository in paperback form, I can usually get it for like $2 more. So I'm just like, yep, yep. So that's my deal on price. But now let's get into the really competitive things. Multitasking, eating and drinking. Doing things while reading a physical book, it's quite tricky. It is quite tricky. So I can hold both of these with one hand pretty easily. However, when it does come to eating with a physical book, things get really messy. You can't really eat foods that are greasy or crumbly or melty because you're going to get messy fingers and it's kind of tricky to flip the page with just one hand. I flipped two pages instead. See, it's really difficult. So you've got your sticky fingers and you're just going to get it all over the book. It's not very pretty. And also talking about the crumbly bits, if you're eating and bits get in here, they wedge themselves deep into there. You know, you know what I'm talking about? Yeah, the crumbs, they fall into here. And if you try and push your finger into it to get it out, you'd like just kind of wedge it in even more. So you know what? I can probably feast on all of the crumbs that have wedged themselves into the pages of my books. Eating, on the other hand, with this one is super easy because I can hold this with one hand. I can flip the page with one hand by just pressing the button. And then this hand can be super sticky. It can be grubby or whatever. It doesn't have to go anywhere near this. So for eating, the Kindle wins. When it comes to drinking and being around water, both of these aren't fabulous, but I think the e-readers probably got it a little worse because technology and water do not mix well. Whilst you can kind of ruin the beautiful uniformity of all those pages with spilled drinks, you know, how it goes all wavy and just like warped and stuff like that, it's not going to ruin the book. You can still read it just fine. So I'm saying if you drop both of these in a puddle, you can probably still go with this one. You know what I'm saying? You know what I'm saying? So for the water, the book wins. Moving on to convenience, how easy is it to read and also carry around both of these? Here is a 450 page book. Here I have 450 books and look at that. My 450 books are smaller and a lot thinner. Carrying around all of these books is super easy. It doesn't affect the weight of the Kindle at all. If I tried to carry 450 physical books, that's probably close to my entire book collection. It's, it's not going to happen. I'd need a truck. And so for that, the e-book wins. How about whilst we are reading? Reading this, reading this is pretty simple, pretty simple, but after a while you probably notice that your arms start to get sore, so you have to kind of reposition yourself. I often like lie down with my book, so I have my book kind of propped up like this, so I can read this page fine, but reading this bit is a little awkward. I have to kind of just like leave it and kind of struggle through it, or I have to move my head, or I have to hold the book up like this. And again, one of my arms are going to get sore. Whilst for the most part I can hold it with one hand, sometimes you do need two, especially when it comes to the flipping of the pages. The Kindle on the other hand, pretty lightweight. I can read it sideways with no problems at all. I can literally prop it up against something and I can have both hands free. So I'm going to have to say again, the e-book. Much more convenient than the real book. But what about accessibility? On one hand we have the e-book. All it takes is a click of a button and it instantly is sent to my Kindle and I can read it right then and there. This on the other hand is a little more tricky. If I'm already at a bookshop then that's perfectly fine, but if I'm sitting at home, I'm wanting a book, it's either I have to go out to the bookshop and find that book, see if it's even available in the local bookshop, and if not I'll probably have to search around at a few different bookstores, or my other option is to go and order it online. Now depending on where I order it from, it can take between two days and two weeks to get to me. So if I'm in a rush, that's not gonna work. The e-book wins again. However, the actual shopping experience, and with this I'm referring to bookstores and when I don't necessarily have a particular book in mind. So you go into the bookstore, just the atmosphere as well, bonus point in itself, but the ability to browse is much, much easier. You have shelves and shelves of books at your fingertips right then and there. You can look at all of these books at once. Usually with e-books it's a little more tricky, unless you have a page full of books, but even still you'd have to go to the next page, then the next page, then the next page. You can't see all there is to offer on one single page. So if I am looking for something new and exciting, it's super easy to just pull this book off the shelf, take a look at the synopsis, the cover, I'm able to flip through the pages and read right then and there. Whilst you can do this on an e-book, you don't have the full book to kind of flip through, if you know what I mean. You got more options here. And so when it comes to the shopping experience itself, definitely the real book. Another handy dandy thing about this is the inbuilt ability to write notes and highlight things. When it comes to this, you have to physically deface the book or stick post-it notes and things like that, but if I don't have post-it notes and a pen handy, then I just don't even bother. With this one, it's right there. It I think also has a dictionary option, which is super, super useful as well. So with e-readers, there are a lot of extra funky features, which are often very useful for the reading experience. So you can take a point for that one. Moving on to something that probably influences me the most when it comes to choosing between e-books and physical books is the physicality of that book. The actual appearance, the feel of it, the smell of it. Every single book looks, feels, smells the same because it comes down to the actual device. There's not much to differentiate between two different books at a quick glance. I think the appeal comes from the fact that I have an epic cover. But then you have this. This. This velvety feeling, the embossed title, the stunning cover, in colour. Some of the books on my Kindle don't even show the book's cover and it's solely in black and white, so not quite as appealing. Things are a little different when it comes to tablets and with those tablets as well, they do have backlights. My Kindle and ReelBook obviously do not, so I can't read either of these in the dark, so just that discussion irrelevant for this. Continuing back to this. The smell of books. The actual feel of those pages. They're just so much softer and absolutely beautiful. Seeing a shelf full of books brings me so much joy. I love it. I love it. I love it. For looks, the ReelBook definitely wins by far. So if I had tallied all of the points, I think the Kindle would have won. But even still, I probably enjoy reading physical books more. The actual experience of reading it, of feeling it, is a lot better than the Kindle, which is why I lean more towards physical books. Even comparing all the pros and cons of both, I personally prefer this. For most situations, when it comes to travelling, this by far. I can't pack an endless amount of books into my suitcase and carry-on bags when I'm going on a trip. On this, I can have any book, every book, right here. Right here. And it literally, it's just the weight difference. My goodness. My goodness. That's actually pretty much the main reason why I initially bought an e-reader for travel. Because I do like to travel. Every time I do go travelling, I read a lot. And carrying all those books around is not fun. And I don't want to have to buy a book and then leave it somewhere because I literally can't carry it with me. So yeah, travelling every day. That's kind of how it works. I also thought I'd include a bonus round. And this is talking about audiobooks. Now, because it's a really different format, it's hard to kind of compare them. But recently, I've been listening to a lot of audiobooks. And I kind of want to share that love a little bit with you. So, audiobooks. Eating, drinking, and multitasking. The possibilities are pretty much endless when it comes to audiobooks. Because you have both hands free, you can eat, drink, whatever you want. You don't really have the risk of ruining a book or anything. Unless you've got an iPod or something, like if you spill anything on that, then that's an issue. But I tend to listen to my audiobooks in the car. Commuting to and from uni because it takes like 45 minutes to an hour to get there. So I'm able to listen to about three to four chapters of an audiobook whilst driving. I also like to listen to audiobooks when I'm cleaning. With audiobooks, I can kind of just listen to it, get into a rhythm, and get my ---- done. Now, with audiobooks as well, this can be separated into physical audiobooks or digital audiobooks. Kind of like the physical and e-book, you know? So this can affect the convenience of it. Because you can obviously store a lot of digital copies of e-books on your computer, on your phone, things like that. Whereas carrying around actual audiobooks is a little more tricky. Now, what about the price? Audiobooks can be quite expensive. Now, because of this, I actually borrow all of my audiobooks from my library. I'm able to download the files and listen to it on my iTunes and thus on my phone. And my library also recently got overdrive and I know that that's a big thing as well. So there's that option. You can get them for free. One of the other ways that I've been able to listen to an audiobook was through Audible last year for the BookTubeAThon. One of the challenges was to listen to an audiobook. So I signed up for a trial of Audible and they give you one free audiobook to listen to. And I chose Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe and I enjoyed it so much. It was like the best audiobook to pick. It was just fantastic. And the full version of Audible is a subscription service. And if you do buy and listen to a lot of audiobooks, it's probably going to be cheaper to use that. Quick plug time. If you were interested in trying out Audible, you can use my affiliate link down below to register for a free trial. You'll get a free audiobook to listen to. So if you haven't listened to many audiobooks and you kind of want to, then I'd suggest maybe giving that a try and seeing if you like it. So I think that about wraps it up for this video. I hope you guys enjoyed it. And I'd love to hear your thoughts about ebooks, physical books, and audiobooks. Which do you prefer out of them? What's your preference? What do you like the most? I will never stop loving the physical book no matter what. No matter what. Because the funny thing is, if I get a book on my Kindle for really cheap, I read it and I enjoy it, I will most likely go and pick up a physical copy of that book. So I think that says something. You know, I do prefer having the physical book in my hands. So yeah, that's it. I will talk to you guys down in the comment section below and I will see you tomorrow. Bye!