My first 12 years with ebooks
Twelve years ago these days, in early July 2010, I put aside print books and began reading only ebooks. The transition to digital allowed me to read more, access books faster, and discover new content and authors.
My motivations for trying ebooks were my ageing eyesight, which was making reading printed material increasingly uncomfortable, and the curiosity for checking out a new gadget a friend had bought, an e-ink ebook reading device.
I soon replaced e-ink readers with ebook reading apps on my Android smartphones and tablets. They're equally effective and more practical, thus making dedicated devices unnecessary.
To round up my digital book experience, I also self-published two ebooks. They were mostly experiments for getting familiar with the digital writing, publishing, and promotion tooling and processes.
Over the years, I shared my digital reading experience and data on the ebooks I bought. Here are the latest entries:
I never looked back. Twelve years later, I'm super happy with digital reading and regularly buy or download tons of ebooks.
However, over the past year I resumed buying a handful of paper books.
Why? Because of my interest in retrocomputing.
Some old programming books about early systems and languages are difficult to find, even online. So, when I come across second-hand copies of valuable old technical books at reasonable prices, I buy them as backups, even if I continue reading and referencing their digital copies. I don't want these precious and rare works to disappear.
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