I Heart Ebooks
Posted: January 21, 2008I never thought I’d be one of those people who’d enjoy ebooks. My favorite thing about reading is turning off the computer (but never the television!) and putting up my feet to read a tangible book. I like the different covers, I like being able to see the books lined up on my bookshelves — which was fine when I started to work and didn’t have a large amount of books.
Whenever I think about my lack of savings and money to spend, all I have to do is look to my right and see my huge bookshelves crammed with over 600 romance novels and another 150 random reference, history, mystery and true crime novels. I’m at the point where it’s going to be very difficult for me to continue purchasing without making more room, a fact that’s not entirely possible with the amount of room I have to work with. It’s actually a big factor in the reason I’d like to start saving to move into my own apartment (with the current debt to salary ratio, it’s not looking likely), I want more space to myself.
So with my diminishing available to store space, I started to look into ebooks. I found two sites that I browse regularly: Ebooks and Ereader. Ebooks didn’t necessarily require me to download anything extra, but they recommended Adobe Digital Editions, which uses less system resources and is a bit more light weight than Adobe Acrobat Reader. That’s fine. Their prices are about the same as bookstore prices and the selection is decent (not always what I’d like.)
Ereader does require separate software, which they provide for free. They have a huge selection of books that mostly unavailable to me in the bookstores or will cost me more money online and there are discounts in their newsletters, so I’ve bought about 10 books for about $40, which is a decent discount over what I would pay in the stores, full price with gas mileage.
All in all, I enjoy Ereader more. I will always try them before going to Ebooks. The selection and prices are better and I like the interface a bit more. But I like both sites in the end and I recommend anyone with my space issues look into the idea of ebooks as an answer. Because, hell, not buying books or selling the ones you have is never the answer. Selling my books! Would you sell your child? 
On a site note, I added an events calendar to help me keep track of my favorite author releases, domain renewals, birthdays, bills, paychecks, etc and I added a quotes plugin. There isn’t a huge selection of quotes available but I’m working on it.
