E-Readers - Do you use one and are they still the future of books?

[thefanciestpigeon]

Idk what's wrong with me (lighthearted) but I can't seem to read e-books usually, my reading comprehension plummets the moment I can't read something as a physical book. short form writing (like on the internet) is fine but I struggle a lot even with long-form internet writing such as a long fanfic. I took a class where one of the books was out of print and only available as an ebook and the essay I wrote about it was a lot worse than the essays I wrote for that class with books I could get physically, and I see that as proof of how it affects what I retain from a book.

I love the idea of e-readers, I like having so many books in such a small amount of space, and being able to take them all with me and the accessibility of not needing to physically go to the store/library, but in practice they just take so much more effort for me to use that they aren't worth it unless I have no other way to read a book.

[IndigoGolem]

What ereader do you have, and how do you manage to get books from websites like this.

After looking into a bunch of modern ereaders i decided i just want something simple that works and doesn't have a million extra features (also true of every electronic device i buy (or haven't bought because i can't find a simple one)). So i got a used Sony PRS-505 (discontinued 2009). It's not perfect but it's fine for most books (barring PDFs with tiny text or one really large book that crashes it). Plus it was about the same price as a not-super-old Kobo ereader.

As for putting books on it, it's very simple. I go to Project Gutenberg (https://gutenberg.org), download a book as an .epub file, and then plug my ereader into my laptop with the USB-mini cord it came with. It opens like any storage drive, i make a folder for the author (optional, to keep things organized), and copy the dowloaded .epub over. When i unplug the ereader it scans its internal storage and SD card for new books and adds them to the list.

I've never owned a Kindle so i don't know if it supports just plugging it into a computer and copying a file over.

I don't really like my Kindle and how Amazon runs it but I am against the idea of getting a new one when I have a perfectly good Kindle. I don't like spending unnecessary money. But morally, my soul is crying every time I buy a book from Amazon. :,(

See if there's some way to borrow ebooks from your local public library and download them straight to your Kindle, like Overdrive or Libby.

I also have heard you can use Calibre to convert your ebooks from Amazon's proprietary format to a regular, DRM-free epub in case you ever do get a non-Amazon ereader.

You could try to jailbreak your Kindle if you want to be able to sideload extra apps, mess with fonts and screensevers, etc. But that's not something i know anything about.

[I did first put this in the thread i'm quoting from, but i think it fits here too.]