FollowE-readers are contraversial to many people.
They see them as somehow taking away from reading.
I have one .. have had one for 3 years and completely disagree.
It doesn’t take away from my love of reading, my love of books, the feel of a book, the enjoyment of words. In fact, if you are not a bibliophile, there is no reason to get a Kindle at all.
So what does my Kindle give me that traditional books don’t. There are a few things. One is it’s very lightweight and I can have 100s of books with me at all times. Two it’s easy to change text size when my eyes or tired, or the text is too small. This is a problem I have all the time with non-fiction books and mass market paperbacks. Third, I love that I have a cover with a light and can read in bed and low light easily. This was excellent last night when I was reading two books in the dark with my wife sleeping, both excellent and emotional. (A River Runs Through It by Norman Maclean (one of my top 50 books ever) and The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch).
Now, I will admit the rise of Amazon and the Kindle hurts the profits of traditional bookstores. It is much, much more convient to purchase a book on a Kindle/Nook and have it come to your home immediately. Or to order a book and have it come to your house.
So what to traditional bookstores have to do? They have to sell cards, calendars, games and be unique somehow. It helps to sell used books and to specialize in something.
I know this will be the end of some good bookstores, Cunningham Books has left Monument Square in Portland, ME. Borders went bankrupt (mainly due to bad capital decisions), and bookstores do close all the time.
But, anything that gets people to read is a good thing. And Kindles encourage reading, they make it easier to carry hundreds of books with you, and they are exceptionally readable these are all good things.
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Kindles can also be great for self-published books, and to go around traditional channels selling books and getting masses of rejections.
Now, not everyone is successful this way but some have been wildly successful: John Locke, Simon Wood, and many others getting traditional book deals after e-book publishing.
So, as a whole I think Kindles encourage reading and readers and keep dropping in my price, if you are a reader check one out and see if it would work for you.
— Edmund