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Remember when ebooks were a strange Internet phenomenon that lacked the critical infrastructure to make them viable alternatives to paper books? I do. And I remember the great push to make them accepted in the halls of publishing, something which many publishers fought against. Today, ebooks are ubiquitous. Nearly every paper book is released alongside an ebook of some kind. While they haven’t taken over the industry as some predicted — and it is possible their invention helped increase the amount of piracy — many readers seem to love them. They have likewise become a staple of the independent (self) publishing market, supported by phone apps and dedicated eReaders. In short, ebooks have had a huge impact, and they’re not going anywhere.
Despite their ubiquity, I don’t read ebooks all that often. In fact, I only do so when recording a podcast interview or when I am roped into something in which ebooks are the only option. In fact, I personally can’t stand reading ebooks, and here I’d like to talk about why.
Ebooks are pretty easy to dislike. Reasons range from their price (too expensive = overvalued; too cheap = devaluing books) to their role in increasing piracy to the DRM that often comes with them and so on. While I, too, find the price of ebooks a bit ridiculous (even if I understand why), my reasons for disliking them have more to do with my reading history…
