Ebooks are popular in this technology-driven day and age. However, physical books were the standard for a long time, and even today, many of us still love and read them.
Some people argue that only physical books can give us an authentic reading experience, which may or may not be true, depending on the individual. Whether or not it is, there is no denying that ebooks have multiple advantages over physical books.
In this article, we’ll look at several of them.
1. Ebooks Let You Customize Your Reading Experience
With physical books, you’re stuck with what you buy. But with ebooks, you can adjust your settings to suit your preferences. You can change font type and size, text alignment, margins and line spacing, and theme.
Most ebook readers come with dark mode, which you can enable to prevent eye strain. You can also change the brightness level of your ebooks to suit the lighting in your environment.
All of the above make ebooks ideal when it comes to enjoying a customized reading experience that’s just for you.
2. Ebooks Are Environmentally-Friendly
With climate change and global warming concerns becoming increasingly widespread, we need to look toward sustainable practices and solutions more than ever. This is one area where ebooks are much better than physical ones.
Physical books negatively impact the environment, thanks to the tree cutting, paper processing, page printing, and book shipping involved. But ebooks are an environmentally-friendly mode of entertainment that significantly reduces the strain on the planet.
The more people turn to ebooks, the less the demand for paper production. They eliminate the need for paper, ink, and transportation in the book publishing industry, reducing deforestation, energy consumption, and carbon emissions.
By embracing ebooks, we can enjoy our literary pursuits while actively contributing to preserving the planet. This sounds like a huge win in our book.
3. Ebooks Don’t Take Up Physical Space
If you’re a physical book lover, it’s easy to amass an extensive collection of books you do not have room for. This means you constantly have to consider your space when buying books.
And what if you need to carry books with you? Imagine lugging around three, four, five, or more books in your bag, each taking up considerable space, especially if they’re big or hardcovers.
Ebooks prevent the above issues, allowing you to have as many books as possible without worrying about physical space. Your device’s storage capacity, on the other hand, is another matter. But you can easily take care of that with an external drive, cloud storage, or network drive for additional storage space.
4. You Can Find Free Ebooks on the Web
Ebooks come in different prices, from the pricey to the affordable and, yes, to the free as well. For us ebook lovers, the only thing we might love more than ebooks are free ebooks, of which there are a ton on the internet.
We’re not talking about pirated books, but books you can download legally, free of charge, whether it’s classics or newer stories, horror or sci-fi, or even some other book format, like MOBI or PDF. There are many websites where you can find free ebooks, so be sure to check them out.
5. You Don’t Have to Worry About Stained Pages With Ebooks
One of the most annoying things about physical books is seeing stains on the pages because you can't get them out. But ebooks allow you to enjoy a meal or drink while you read without worrying about that.
Also, ebooks are durable, unlike physical books. They don’t suffer from wear and tear, meaning no cracked spines, torn pages, or torn covers. So you can read a book multiple times without worrying about it falling apart.
6. Ebooks Are Easier to Access
Since ebooks are digital, they exist online. All you need to do is go to an online ebook store, search for the book, then purchase and download it. That’s all there is to it.
On the other hand, you must go out in search of physical books. You won’t always find them in bookstores or libraries, whereas ebooks are readily available online.
And if you order physical books online, you must wait for them to be delivered. Depending on where you live, you might not be able to receive book deliveries.
7. Ebooks Are Portable
One marvelous thing about ebooks is having as many of them as you want on your device. You can carry hundreds or thousands of books, all on a single device. All you need is an EPUB reader for your device, and you’re good to go. You can read books on your device in your free time.
Physical books, on the other hand, are much bulkier. A thousand-page novel might not fit easily in your bag, plus you won't have to remember where you left your book or whether or not you lent it to someone.
8. Ebooks Offer Interactive Features
Reading is typically an immersive experience, but ebooks can take things further thanks to features that readers can interact with, including quizzes and multimedia like videos, images, GIFs, and audio.
Ebooks can also contain hyperlinks to videos and images or the author or publisher’s website, blog, and social media.
These interactive elements in ebooks can make your reading experience more fun, engaging, and memorable. But you won’t find them in physical books.
9. You Can Syncy Ebooks Across Devices
You can sync your ebooks across all your devices. This means you can start reading on one device and pick up where you left off on another as long as you use a cross-platform ebook reader.
Syncing ebooks allows you to seamlessly switch between devices when reading and viewing your books, bookmarks, and annotations across devices. This way, you’ll never lose your place while reading.
Stick With Ebooks for Reading
Ebooks don’t have the charm of physical books. You can’t feel or smell them or hear the pages flip when you turn them over. But what ebooks lack in charm, they more than makeup for with their advantages.
Ebooks have multiple advantages, from the sustainable (reducing the publishing industry’s negative impact on the environment) to the practical (you can fit many books on one device). As such, they’re a much better book format than physical books.