Books or eBooks?

Amazon’s Kindle, Sony’s Reader, Barnes and Noble’s Nook – all are competing devices in the industry of e-readers; even the upcoming Apple iPad can display eBooks. While the market for digital books is continually growing, some consider the advantages of paper books impossible for technology to digitally simulate. How can anything replace the crackling of the pages, the smell of the paper, the worn spine of a well-used book, or the pleasure of reading to a young child?

E-readers are convenient for many reasons though. Here are a few pros to buying an e-reader:

• Lightweight – Has your back ever hurt from carrying around a bag full of books? (I think we as college students can all relate to that!) E-readers allow you to carry hundreds of books in one hand.

• Compact – Every one of the books you buy has to be stored somewhere at home. The contents of several bookcases fit within a space as small as a couple of magazines.

• Immediate access to books – An e-reader, at the click of a button, puts the book you want right in your hands in seconds; there’s no time spent driving to a bookstore or waiting for a box to ship.

They seem perfect, right? Not always. Here are a few cons to buying an e-reader:

• Lending/Borrowing – Currently, copyrights and restrictions on many e-readers (most notably the Amazon Kindle) make it illegal to lend or borrow eBooks from your friends.

• Renting – Though some e-readers now offer ways to rent or check out books for a period, not all offer this feature yet.

• Reselling – There’s no way to sell a digital book on eBay when you’re done with it, so whether you read it again or not, you don’t get your money back.

• Money, money, money – Though eBooks are usually cheaper than paper books, you have to have enough money to plunk down on an e-reader in the first place, which typically range from $200 to $500.

All in all, e-readers still lack a few features that books have offered for years; but as the business grows, the products get better. Though they will never be able to completely replace books – especially for sentimental reasons – e-readers are useful and popular devices, and some people predict they are the future. What do you think: books or eBooks? Or is there room for both?