What Do You Say To People Who Don’t Like Kindles?

A reader wants to know  how to lure a friend over to the eReader side.  “I have a question…..What do you say to people who insist they like the feel of a book and don’t even want to try a Kindle. I find it so much easier on my eyes. I can read much longer on my Kindle. I really like my Kindle.”

I really love my Kindle, too. But I also get the appeal of physical books. They have weight and heft. They look pretty on a shelf and proudly broadcast to all the many great books you’ve read over the years. In fact, I think of them like hunting trophies.  I like books so much, I even turned my downstairs coat closet into a library.

Old books also get this great smell that’s a little bit like vanilla. That’s actually due to the mites that live in the paper, but let’s not get into that or I’ll get creeped out. But I certainly think an eReader is worth trying out. Especially if you had a nice friend willing to let you borrow one for an afternoon. (Hint, hint.)

So here’s my pitch for trying out an eReader or for using a Kindle app (or another eReader app) on your tablet or phone.

First of all, let’s get the idea out of the way that you have to pick one or the other.  I do agree with you that an eReader can be much easier on the eyes that a physical book. Since I now need reading glasses, I especially appreciate being able to enlarge the text to a readable size. Glasses give me a headache, while the enlarged text on an eReader does not. Since eReaders are not backlit, they don’t give you screen fatigue the way a tablet, TV, smartphone or computer monitor can.

eReaders are also super-light and thin. Easy to hold in one hand and easy to slip into a purse or even a large coat pocket. They will stay charged for days, even weeks. Plus, it’s hard to be the convenience of being able to fit thousands of books on one small device and take it with you. They are fantastic for traveling. Packing a suitcase full of books is impractical.

An eReader is a device just designed for reading, you can’t install other apps on it.

A tablet is something different.  You can install apps and use it for e-mail, the Internet, listening to music, or playing games. To read eBooks, you install an app, like the Kindle app. For someone who owns a tablet or smartphone, but isn’t sure about an eReader, this can be a good introduction to using eBooks. There’s also the option of purchasing a Kindle Fire tablet.

I like the ability to enlarge text at will and also the ease of borrowing books from the library with a couple of taps and being able to purchase a book with one touch and have it on my tablet to read within seconds.

For some folks, just trying out an eReader or tablet is enough to convert them. My husband was one of those who said he would never want an eReader or a tablet. Now he reads books on his tablet every day.

For diehards, nothing you say or do is going to convince them. Some people just aren’t going to like some things. I do not like beer. Despite 30 years of people offering different flavors of beer to me to try, I’ve still not been able to convince people that I just don’t like and I don’t want any. Sometimes you have to just let people be themselves.

I’ll throw this one to our readers now.  What do you think about eReaders? What would you say to someone to convince them to give one a try? Let us know in the comments.

~ Cynthia