Imagine a device slightly smaller than a tablet that can literally free up real estate space in your home. A device that can eliminate an entire library of books from your home or room, giving you back much needed space to use for other purposes. I am taking about the Amazon Kindle E-reader!
It has been more than 6 years since I got my Amazon Kindle E-Reader and it is no exaggeration to say it has changed my life, at least from an education and reading prospective. To start, it has made it a lot easier to read, which resulted in being able to read more books per year. I went from reading 2-3 books a year to about 12 a year (1 per month) But the benefit don’t stop there, and touch other aspects of my life. Let me go through some and how this $100 device has made such a big difference.
Time saved
Kindle helps me save time reading, as it is all digital and makes it easy to go from one page to another, chapter to another or even book to book, all with a few clicks or swipes. More importantly, you can search through any book or the entire library, as well as make highlights and detailed notes on any page or section etc. As they say, the best way to retain what you read is to write your own notes or teach the material. With Kindle, you get to make notes as you read, and be able to review these later, even export them to other formats and be able to read them on other devices later. Speaking of other devices, as your books are saved on the cloud, you could pick up and read from anywhere, even if you don’t have your book with you. For example, you can download the Kindle app to your smartphone, or visit the Kindle website and be able to access all your books and notes there. Total convenience and a seamless experience to be close to your book anywhere and anytime. Imagine how hard it would be to do that with physical books, especially if you have more than a few.
Space saved
Speaking of physical books, here is a quick calculation of how many books can a basic 8GB Kindle hold: approximately 3,000-4000 books, and probably more if they are smaller-sized books. To put that into prospective, take a look at the picture above, which contains around 300 books: Kindle would save 10 times as much space as this small room! Yes, you read that right! In other words, if 3,000 books are equivalent of one floor stacked from floor to ceiling, then a Kindle puts a full house worth of books into one small device, which you can fit into your pocket! Understand that for those avid book lovers , a physical library is a must as it adds that extra dimension to the whole experience of reading. In that case, you can still have a small physical shelf and put your classics and all-time favorite books there, especially those timeless hard covers. For everything else, best to get them over to the digital world on a Kindle. Just as music went from tapes and DVDs to being completely digital and on the cloud, the book experience is heading that way, even if books are understandably different from music and some still want that physical experience.
Money saved
If Kindle can save you space and time, then it sure can save you the on the third dimension that usually goes along with space and time: money! To begin with, most Kindle editions of a book cost less, since there is no physical copy to print and ship. This alone will save you money in the long term, especially if you buy a minimum of 10 or more books a year. According to some estimates, on average, a Kindle version is 35% cheaper than the hardcover version, and 30% cheaper than the paperback version of the same book. In fact, you can find a lot of free books and classics on Kindle, something you would still need to pay for physical books even if the cost is minimal.
While some people still prefer the look, smell and touch of flipping through a physical book and having that cozy home library feeling, a Kindle E-Reader has a lot of benefits when it comes to space, time and money you could save. One way to get the benefits while still owning physical books is to limit your physical books to hard cover, text books and classic ones that look better in a real physical book. For the rest, get them in a digital copy on Kindle. As you get more comfortable with Kindle, you will realize its other benefit, which is to make you a more frequent and committed reader, given the great technology behind it and the ease of use. And although this article is about Kindle specifically, there are other E-Readers out there. But Kindle has the dominant share of the E-Readers market, given its superior technology and the number of books available on its platform.