How to fall in love with ebooks?

[holyschist]

I've noticed that generally people seem to fall in instant love with ereaders. I didn't, and I'd really like to, in hopes of being able to haul around somewhat fewer dead trees (although much of my book collection is unfortunately not a good candidate for digital replacement).

Is there anyone out there who was not immediately enthused, but grew to love an ereader anyway? What helped? Better technology (the new eInk screens are significantly better than on my old Sony)? A different model? Something else?

At present, I pretty much only use my ereader for traveling. I feel like the advantages of print books for me are a) I find them more comfortable to read, b) higher contrast (possibly resolved by new eInk?), and c) I enjoy being able to flip through books (I also enjoy being able to search books, but mostly do this on my computer). Also, for many of the backlist books I love, ebook conversions are often extremely poor in quality, and I resent having to hack a file to fix formatting and OCR errors when I can get a perfectly fine paper copy, and may already own one. So I don't know, maybe these are insurmountable issues?

Anyone else been in this boat and found a way to make ereaders really work for you?

Comments

[dragonfly]

I have a Sony as of last Christmas. I still find the process of downloading books to be clumsy and frustrating. It makes me throw the thing in the corner and say, "what a waste." And no, I'm not buying from Sony's own marketplace, so that may be part of the problem. I find free things and can't get them, and I even paid ten dollars for an eBook on Amazon, and after they took my money, the damn book wasn't there in my library and it took a call to Amazon's support people to fix it. I just don't need my book procuring to be this kind of hassle.

I suppose I'll learn and then love it. *sigh*

[boundbooks]

I've always been interested in the concept of ebooks and ebook readers, but I had no actual interest in buying a reader until the very latest generation of readers.

The older generations had too slow of a page refresh rate for my reading speed. I definitely would not have fallen in love with my ereader if I had owned anything but the most recent generation.

[seryn]

What really helped was finding that I could download fanfic to my kindle for free. I'd collected a lot of free books from Amazon before I bought a kindle and having loaded them all on there, the other thing that was really useful was having 200 books at my disposal when I was unexpectedly stuck waiting for 12 hours. I wouldn't have brought fluff reading but that was all I was up for.

I also found it really nice to have at the gym because people couldn't tell what I was reading and therefore wouldn't ask me about it when I was trying to climb the stairway to nowhere.

It took me a really long time to get used to the page turn redraw lag.

I read paper books at home though. I still buy paper books. But When I drop reading material in my bag for the day it's always my kindle.

[lynnoconnacht]

I wish I could offer any answers to the question, but I'm afraid I'm one of the people who didn't have much trouble switching to ereaders. I hope that the comments below offer you something useful regardless, though. Despite the fact that I fell for ereading pretty quickly, I've still found things that improve(d) my experiences.

Looking at your list of advantages, I have to ask why print books are more comfortable to read for you. If you know why you find them more comfortable, there might be things you can do to mimic it with an ereader.

If they're easier on the eyes, then new technology/eInk might help with that. I don't know. My ereader is several years old and I haven't looked into replacing it yet. If they're easier to hold, it might be worth investing in a cover that makes your ereader feel more like a book. Mine's been worth every penny for me. I have pretty small hands, so it's hard to find a print book that I can hold particularly comfortably. My ereader is a tad too thin and its edges a tad too rough to be comfortable on its own, but putting it in a cover/case has worked wonders for me. It's the most comfortable 'book' I've ever held now. (Plus, its front now has a pretty, colourful print, so my brain can believe it has a cover image. Pasting on a decal skin just isn't the same.)

I do find that reading on my tablet edges slightly ahead of reading on my ereader in terms of preference purely because that usually allows me more control over the presentation of the books and because the screen is larger. I hadn't thought that that'd matter to me, but apparently it does. On my tablet my page count looks smaller, I'm not bound by only three font sizes but can set the one that I'm most comfortable with for a book myself, it's easier to get to a book's ToC, I can set the screen brightness however I want, it's in colour, doesn't take forever to load when it's scaling pictures...

None of those are things that I desperately need, but they're all things that do enhance my experiences with an ebook.

[chocolatehearts]

I initially fell in love with the Kindle when I got it from my brother, and then when I bought my own fell out of love, then back in love. It took me a while to get used to the difference in flipping through (highlighting helps!) and the different way it fits in my hand. Now I so dislike the idea of pbooks.

My library has a decent selection of stuff online, which really helped. I'd just request them for when they're available, and get a notice in my inbox. It made getting books I really wanted to read easy, and checking out stuff I'm not so sure about. Being able to try all different kinds of things without the commitment of going to the library, checking out a heavy stack, and then having to bring them back again and potentially not even like them!

For getting an upgrade, I don't know if it's this easy at every store, but I bought a Nook at Barnes and Noble and returned it a week or two later when I discovered it didn't save my notes the way I needed them. Full refund, no questions asked. I'm not sure I'd recommend that for a trial, but some stores have friendlier return policies if you're worried about making a big jump.

[fred_mouse]

Turns out that I really like to read in landscape format, or with only one column of print (where a printed book is a minimum of two), both of which I get on my tablet. As it is always with my, being my diary, and my note taking device, I find that every now and then I need something to read, and it is Right There. So, I came to love it for other features, and then added in ebooks.

[yarngeek]

I haven't really cottoned onto ereaders as such*, but I found that having a smart(enough) phone with an app really converted me just about overnight. Do I have my phone with me == do I have eleventymillion books/stories with me and the opportunity for more (unless the train's in a tunnel).

* I commute on the bus and the train, carrying a laptop, lunch, water, snack, coffee, iPod, and phone with me. I strongly resist carrying *anything else* if I don't have to.