How Kindle Reading is Different than Paperback Reading

While you can’t call me a fan of Apple or of Android, I am a true fan of the Amazon Kindle.

Does this make me a Fandle or a Kinfan? Or maybe it should be Amafan or fanzon. Who knows.

Anyway, since starting my journey with the Kindle, my reading habits have changed. I recently had the need to read a paperback book – one of the few left lying around that haven’t been read because of the timing – I received them close to the time I purchased my Kindle. It got me back to seeing how different the reading experience is.

What’s the name of the book again?

I just can’t tell people what book I am reading anymore. When you are reading a physical book, you open and close it multiple times. In each time, you see the cover, you see the name of the writer and the name of the book.

When you are reading on a Kindle, the only time you’ll see the name of the writer is when you select the book to read on your device. After that – it is pure words.

People think this is weird, but I think it has a certain charm to it.

What’s the page number?

There are no pages in a Kindle book, so you never really know how long it is. With physical books, you know how long the book is just by looking at it – the thickness gives that information away (or just peeking into the last page). I also used to count my position roughly by hundreds of pages.

On a Kindle, all books are 100% long. You know where you are in a book, but it is rather hard to know how long it is. Where am I with the current book? 56% and making some good progress.

Should I read until the end of the chapter?

Remember staying late at night just to get to a decent stopping point in the book? The end of the chapter or such?

Not necessary with a Kindle. You close the device – or let it close itself after a while – and when you open it again, it is on the same page. I try reading until the end of the first paragraph of the “page” I am reading so it will be easy for me to pick up where I stopped.

Should I take the book with me?

This is a dilemma I had when flying abroad:

• Do I take a single book or two books?
• Should I take the book I am currently reading, or leave it to my return – just because I am close to the end of it and lugging it with me across the Far East seems like a waste of time.

No more! Now I just grab my Kindle and go. Practically everywhere: abroad on planes, to the barber, the doctor – any place where there’s a potential of a waiting line. It works great for me: the Kindle is in the same size of a pocket book, just thinner and lighter.

What is the book about anyway?

This is a hard one.

I used to buy 10-20 books at a time from Amazon – to make sure I have enough reading material to last me for a while. Selecting which one to read usually was done by looking at the back covers of 1-2 books and picking them up.

Doing the same with a Kindle requires going online over WiFi to see the descriptions, which is a bit of a pain once you get used to the simplicity of the device. This is why I tend to select a book based on its title only these days. And then at the 3-4% mark in the book actually understand what am I reading.

I also have a backlog of about 50 books on the device that are waiting for my attention, which means that I have more choice on the device when I want to start a new book.

I must ready the sequel!

Know that feeling? You are reading a book. It is great, but it has come to an end. You now need the sequel of it to continue the adventure.

The way I purchased physical books on Amazon was by selecting the first book of a series and buying it with a bunch of other books. If I liked it enough, in my next purchase – usually half a year or more later – I’d buy the whole series. Too much waiting time there.

On the Kindle, the moment I finish a book, if I like it, I just go online and buy the next one. And it is there immediately. No waiting time. This has changed the way I read series of books. It also allowed me to read The Hunger Games Trilogy within a span of 3 weeks. Once I purchased and started reading the first one – I couldn’t stop reading until the series was over.

No more acknowledgements or some such

Know those 10 first pages of a book? With the copyright, the cover, list of other books of the author, an acknowledgements page, maybe an editor’s note or a foreword from the author or a fellow author?

They exist in a Kindle book, but you just never ever see them. Why? Because when you open a book on Kindle, it opens up of the first page of the first chapter instead of the cover page. And if you think about it – in most cases, there’s no real reason to page backwards to read these pages either.

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The experience is different between Kindle and physical books. I can’t really say which one is better – just that they are different. Better get used to it – eBooks are the future.