Not Convinced on Electronic Readers (yet)

Electronic readers are a piece of technology I haven’t completely embraced yet.  I currently have the Kindle app on my iPad, iBooks and I own a Nook so one would think I was totally sold.  But honestly, I struggle with a couple things.   Books have always been an important part of our lives.  We have bookcases in every room in our home and built them in when we redid the basement. My grandmother actually started a library in her town and was an extension until she moved (and you should see the crazy books she had from that!).  So not having books is not an option for us.

I totally love that I can carry a bunch of books with me any time and they don’t need the space. I love that my Nook feels like a book and goes anywhere a book goes.  My iPad is too big for my hands to feel comfortable for long rainy afternoons sitting and reading but for short periods, it is great too.  I love that the iPad plays music while I read so it is an all-in-one option.   I also love that a new book comes out by an author I like and I can get it instantly.  No traveling required.  Finally, if there was a fire, it is now on my list of things I would try to retrieve before getting out of the house. Who would have thought I could save my library!

But there are a couple drawbacks and one that is a doosy.   I don’t love that I have to charge the device.  If I decide to read, there is no planning required.  I go to the shelf, pick out a book and plunk down.  Now, I have to make sure my device is charged up.  But, I can live with that.  My big issue?  What if the companies decide to stop hosting these applications?  Do I just lose my books?   Some I wouldn’t care because they weren’t what I was hoping or whatever, but what about the others?  I hate to just lose them. There is no back up, no way to store them locally, or anything. They aren’t mine. This was confirmed this week when the Harvard Business Review put out an article on how you can’t leave your library to someone else. Once you go, your library goes with you.  Now you may say that isn’t a big deal because all of those books are available for my family to buy as they are electronic but that changes how I have to think about what I want to leave them. Is that what we’ll have to do? Instead of going through grandma’s books, will we now go through lists of what she thought was worth owning?

I know it isn’t a huge big deal and if one company goes out another will pick up, but now I have to maintain a list of my library in each device so I can re-buy something if that company quits. Or, I can do what I’ve already done a couple times, and that’s buy the books I loved on paper. No one can delete those.

So what do you think?  Am I being silly?