The Benefits of E-books

Hello, this is Pandagorogoro.

The e-book stores I currently use are NTT Solmare's Comic Cmoa and Sony's Reader Store.

I buy manga and novels on Comic Cmoa, and books not available on Cmoa at the Reader Store.
Each has its own coupons and discounts, so if you shop wisely, you can get the books you want at a great price.

I used to use a Sony Reader to read e-books, but since it started acting up a few years ago, I gave up on it and have been using my smartphone to read e-books ever since.

Because I transferred my entire library from the reader to my Sony smartphone, it's like I'm walking around with my bookshelf everywhere I go.

This is one of the great things about e-books: once you've purchased a book, it doesn't disappear or become unreadable even if you change the device you're reading on.

The fact that you can change the device you read on,

also means that you can read on multiple devices at the same time.

Being able to read a single book on multiple devices

I realized again the other day that this is a significant advantage of e-books, so I decided to write an article about it today.

The other day, I was talking to my daughter, and the topic of what books we were currently reading came up.

At that time, I had just finished reading Sayaka Murata's Convenience Store Woman, so I told her my thoughts:
"It was a strange story, but it was really interesting."

Actually, the reason I decided to read Convenience Store Woman was because I remembered reading Sayaka Murata's essay collection, How to Make Beautiful Wrinkles, which my daughter had recommended to me.
Since the essay collection was interesting, I thought her novels might be good too.

When I said that, my daughter said she didn't remember.

"You know, you said you read something called Miraclina, too," I said, and she replied, "Oh, I remember!

Marunouchi Magic Girl Miraclina, right? That wasn't on the unlimited reading service, so I bought it on Amazon. If you want to read it, go ahead. You can read it." "Thanks. I bought Convenience Store Woman

on Cmoa, so it's in my Cmoa bookshelf."

For those of you who caught on immediately from this conversation,
this is the beauty of being able to download the same book on multiple devices.

On Comic Cmoa, you can sync up to five devices.
You can use a tablet at home and a smartphone when you're out, and you can even sync devices between different people, like my daughter and me.

My daughter can freely browse the books I bought on Comic Seymour, where I have a membership, and I can read up to 10 books I want to read from Amazon's Kindle Unlimited (all-you-can-read service), which my daughter is subscribed to.
Once you finish reading a book, you can return it and read a new one.

My daughter says she buys books that aren't included in the all-you-can-read service (like new releases) on Amazon during sales, and since I can read the books she buys in the same way, I also readMarunouchi Magical Girl Miraculinaafter she bought it.

This was a collection of short stories, and as expected, it included tales with unique settings and eccentric characters.

In this way, whichever one of us buys a book,
the other can read it for free without any time lag.

After reading, we share our thoughts with each other, and if we come across a book that would suit the other person, we can recommend it.

This is much easier than lending and borrowing physical books (there is no need to meet up or carry books around), and there is no risk of forgetting to return them.

It made me realize once again what a convenient era we live in.

I think the biggest advantage of e-books is that they don't take up space.

Compared to paper books, they have no weight, so if you keep one device in your bag, you can easily carry hundreds of books at once.

You are also freed from the worry of your bookshelves at home becoming full.

Speaking of worries, I suppose there are things like posture when reading on a device (tech neck) or dry eyes.

I want to take care of my health and continue to enjoy these convenient features.

Thank you for reading until the end today.
I'm sure you are all enjoying e-books as well.
At the same time, the merits of paper books are hard to give up, aren't they?
I hope to incorporate the best of both worlds.