E-Books vs. Real Books

By Rawan AbuShaban.

Accessibility, variety, and high performance – these are the promises of the digital age. Most of our contemporary pleasures have been adapted onto one electronic platform or another for these very alluring prospects, including one of the most primordial of pleasures – reading a book.

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Digitized e-books are progressively pushing traditional, hard-copy books out of the market and out of the hands of readers with their promise of a better, more efficient product. However, this switch dilutes the reader’s experience, and empirical evidence points towards the health risks and inefficiencies attributed to reading onscreen.

Are there perks for readers to enjoy in this modern shift to e-books? Yes, there are.

Do these advantages outweigh those of the e-book’s paper predecessor? No, they don’t.

In fact, the slim benefits of reading e-books lie in the colossal shadow of physical books, which promise the reader far more than their virtual contenders.

How do real books surpass the shortcomings of electronic books? Let’s observe how some of the assumptions commonly associated with e-books compete with the facts we already know about their good, old-fashioned paper progenitors – real books.

E-book vendors offer remote access to thousands of downloadable titles; real book vendors offer access to millions.

With most e-books, cheap new purchases to add to the reader’s digital collection are just a few clicks away. While physical books may not always offer the immediate relief of finding the title you want, that is the very purpose of libraries and bookshops.

Not only do these venues offer hosts of books that are certain to include the one your heart desires – likely even for free – they also provide a selection of books that you never knew you wanted. In his book, The Unknown Unknown: Bookshops and the Delight of Not Getting What You Wanted, author Mark Forsyth says, “Lord, deliver us from what we already knew we wanted. Give us some new desires, the weirder the better.”

Books exist in the millions, and are right at our fingertips, for those of us who know how to use basic, common resources.

The existence of e-books makes it easier to get what you think you want; the existence of real books makes it a journey to get what you truly need.

Downloading a text is easy, but whatever happened to the sheer adventure of pursuing literature? In the pursuit of e-books, the reader misses out on navigating libraries and perusing bookshelves for titles old and new, for rare finds or new first editions to add to a home collection, to savor time and again, and to share with family and friends.

E-books strip the reader of the delight of this process, who is then left to sulk onwards in a short-lived journey that ends at a PayPal login screen.

E-books give you information; real books let your brain process information.

E-books may seem practical, insofar as the virtual copy of a text can be stored neatly inside some pocketable device that you already own. However, the pragmatism of reading onscreen pretty much ends there.

On average, it takes a reader 20-30% more time to read onscreen text as opposed to text on paper. Furthermore, readers are less likely to remember information read onscreen rather than information read on paper. Texts read on paper deliver the fullest overall retention of information to the reader.

A recent study in Norway uncovered the same results, attributing the shortcomings of e-books in information retention to the lack of the physical, tactile sense of progress felt by the reader. Head researcher Anne Mangen found that in order to retain information, a reader must read uninterrupted for long durations of time – an activity commonly and successfully entertained by pages of text that are manifested and bound together, e.g. physical books.

With the many irresistible facets of the internet only clicks away, readers who use iPads and computers as their media of choice are actually at risk of losing information with every break they take.

E-books also inhibit the reader’s ability to empathize and immerse themselves in the text. In regard to yet another study in which readers were given an upsetting story to read either on paper or onscreen, researchers stated that “paper readers did report higher on measures having to do with empathy and transportation and immersion, and narrative coherence, than iPad readers.”

E-books and texts read onscreen do little justice to the fertility of the stories that have been crafted specifically for the reader’s pleasure and metaphysical transportation, and result in inauthentic reading experiences.

E-books nourish your mind; real books nourish your mind and body, without consequently damaging both.

While e-books may seem to serve as useful alternatives for readers on the go, the practical disadvantages and health risks of reading books on electronic platforms far outweigh the benefits.

E-books are associated with increased levels of stress and exhaustion on the part of the reader. This detracts from the pleasure of reading, and ultimately affects the reader’s overall experience.

Screen glare and light emitted by most e-readers decrease melatonin, an important sleep hormone. This prolongs the time it takes for a person to fall asleep, and thus decreases the length and quality the reader has to sleep at night. This often results in fatigue and sleep deficiency, which may ultimately lead to metabolic disease such as obesity and diabetes, if aggravated. Conversely, reading physical books doesn’t impede sleep, and helps calm down the brain. Unlike e-books, real books don’t stress the reader; in fact, physical books alleviate stress and help the reader relax, resulting in better, undisturbed sleep.

E-books provide you with texts; real books provide you with escape.

In a modern society where non-electronic devices have become novel items, real books are all the more necessary to the reader who wishes to relax and unwind. The days of students and professionals are spent staring at computer screens, using smartphones to e-mail bosses or share photos of cats, watching television at home, studying from lecture slides that the nicer professors upload to the net, Skyping moms, and taking artfully crafted selfies. At the end of the day, all you want to do is curl up with a nice book and unplug – but how can this unplugging ever be achieved if you’re staring at the same white screen your face has been glued to all day?

Real books not only help us get off the grid, they take us off devices entirely and allow us to escape the digitized lifestyle that seems to confine us from all sides. With a real book in hand, we are able to finally disconnect, strip ourselves of our networks and alter-egos, if only for a brief amount of time, to indulge in a secret pleasure that can only be described as reading and imagining – without the unhealthy side-effects.

The allure of the digital age cannot detract from the numerous studies which unanimously point to the unhealthy side effects of reading onscreen, contrasting with the health benefits associated with reading physical books. The inefficiencies and shortcomings of reading e-books as opposed to real books cannot be ignored.

While these facts may alter a reader’s opinion, they alone cannot dictate a reader’s taste in books.

Ultimately, the right choice comes down to preference. Each literary medium serves a different purpose.

If you choose to disregard the negative health effects and prefer to strain your eyes against the white glare of a screen as you process words and sentences with difficulty on a platform devoid of sentimental value, then sticking to e-books is the choice for you.

However, if you take pleasure in actually remembering what you read, and savoring the antiquity of stories that you can hold in your hands as you glide your fingertips, page by page, against the smooth paper of a musty book, completely immersed in tantalizing script, then choosing hard-copy books is the way to go.

Read more about Anne Mangen’s studies here.

Recommended articles:

NY Times – Reading Literature on Screen: A Price for Convenience?

.Mic – Science Has Great News For People Who Read Actual Books

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Rawan AbuShaban is the principal writer at Bookselves. Follow her on Twitter @obirawankenobi.

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