I love my Kindle. It's one of the best purchases that I've ever made. For a long time, I read exclusively on my Kindle. I stopped buying physical books for several reasons:
Collecting physical books seemed like a vanity project. I loved the idea of having a home library but I felt like it was partly to impress others. I've since changed my mind — having a home library sounds awesome. I don't care if there's a little vanity in my desire to have a personal library.
There was also real environmental impact in buying physical books. Paper costs trees, and I wanted to do my part in reducing deforestation.
Having a Kindle is convenient, especially when I'm traveling. My Kindle takes little space and stores hundreds of books. The model I have — Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition — has a backlight and dark mode. I can control the color temperature to minimize blue light, making it perfect for reading in bed at night.
Lately, I haven't been reading on my Kindle. I stopped buying ebooks and audiobooks. The last ebook I bought for my Kindle was close to a year ago. I've bought over 40 physical books since then. I missed reading physical books.
Reading a physical book, engages more than just your eyes. I can feel the roughness of the papers in my fingers. Even turning the pages is satisfying. I love the smell of a new book and it's the first thing I do when I open a book I had just bought.
When reading non-fiction books, I highlight passages and write notes on the inside of the cover pages. While highlighting on the Kindle is easy, writing notes on it is not. Collecting the highlights and notes after reading a book is easy with services like Readwise that will automatically sync it with Obsidian or Notion. But I prefer taking notes directly in the books. They are always there when I need them. It takes a bit of time but manually transcribing the highlights and notes to Obsidian also reinforces the core ideas of the book.
The final reason that I stopped buying ebooks: Amazon. When you buy an ebook on Amazon, you don't own it — you're just buying a license to access the book. Amazon can change or revoke that license at their discretion and they have. They once deleted George Orwell's 1984 from thousands of Kindles. Amazon did however, refund the users. They have changed the book cover of The Wheel of Time to promote their TV adaptation. I don't have The Wheel of Time, but I've seen the same thing happen to Dune. The point is, Amazon has unrestricted control over devices and content that we paid for. Changing the cover of a book seems pretty harmless. But it gets worse.
In February 2023, Puffin automatically updated Roald Dahl e-books with "sanitized" versions containing hundreds of changes to the original text. Users weren't given a choice or notification.
I haven't read Roald Dahl's books, but this is disgusting. Dahl died in 1990. Editing his work this way destroys his original intent, historical context and sets a dangerous precedent, especially in today's political climate when everything has to fit a particular narrative. While Puffin is the culprit, Amazon's allowing these forced updates makes them partly responsible.
Now Amazon is removing the ability to download ebooks to PCs after February 26th. Users can only download directly to their Kindle via wifi. This makes old Kindles without internet access obsolete. I have newer Kindle but how can I trust that it won't be made obsolete in the future? As someone who has almost a hundred ebooks, I can't accept losing access to books I paid for or having their content changed after purchase.
Steam does the same with games. They recently started explicitly stating on their checkout page that we're only buying a license. Amazon and Steam are both monopolies in their industry. Steam to their credit, hasn't pulled the rug out yet (that I know of). I'll keep buying games from Steam because that's where the games I play and want to play are published.
With Amazon, I have other options. I can still buy physical books (sometimes, begrudgingly, on Amazon). I've rediscovered the joy of visiting bookstores — it gets me out of the house and helps me discover new books.
I acknowledge the environmental impact of physical books and am looking for ways to offset it. I also haven't overlooked the convenience of an ebook reader. I'm considering moving to other readers like Kobo, but I'll need a new store where I can actually own what I buy. As for my current ebooks, I've downloaded my Kindle library in its entirety for offline storage.