Which do you prefer?
Reading Habits
I’ve recently bought myself a Kindle. I wanted to get it because I’m going to be travelling more to work and I wanted something light. I also have changed my reading habits… I used to have a Kindle in uni about 7 years ago now (don’t want to think about how long ago that was) and I really didn’t like it.
When I would read in uni, I loved non-fiction books or classic fiction novels and I wanted to devour them. I just wanted to speed through them, feel acomplished that I’d learnt something and then move on to the next one. I never got lost in a book, I always counted how many pages were left and I just wanted to finish the books. The kindle didnt give book pages, it wasn’t easy to see how far through the book you were (back then) and I just hated the experience of not having a physical copy. I ended up giving the Kindle to my mum who let me know that it is nowhere to be found when I went looking for it recently (maybe she felt the same about it). So I bought myself a brand new one, its smaller, lighter and I got it in white.
Nowadays, I honestly just have more time to read and get lost in books. I have a brand new appreciation for contemporary fiction and am not obsessed with ‘learning’ anything from books. I don’t have any deadlines over my head or any guilt about spending time to myself and not thinking that I could be learning or working on uni assignments instead. Now I read a variety of non-fiction books, I love them as a source of entertainment and especially in being part of the Bookstagram world, I love reviewing books, sharing reading experiences with others and immersing myself in the book world.
Amazon versus Brick and Mortar Stores
I did a Master’s Degree in Publishing and when I tell you the publishing industry has a gripe with Amazon it is the understatement of the century.
The bones of the argument is that Amazon needs physical bookshops for the consumer to browse books. They directly benefit from this browsing experience without having to provide a shop themselves. All whilst the publisher is trying to not have to sell their books dirt cheap to Amazon.
A customer walks into Waterstones, finds a book they like the look of, goes on to amazon, searches for it directly and buys it for a cheaper price. Amazon doesn’t pay for a physical store, they don’t have this ‘middleman’ so to speak. Amazon buys directly from publishers at a lower price because they have huge marketshare and buying power. Books are more expensive in stores because Waterstones is buying them for a more expensive price than Amazon from the publisher and adding their own cut to the book to keep the shop and pay the workers.
Amazon has done its best to recreate the browser expeience, you can search through genres, it will suggest books to you etc. but nothing is like walking into a bookshop is there? Picking up the book, seeing how large the text is, the print of the book and a personalised bookseller review next to it on the shelf.
Do you have a Kindle? What is your experience with it?
Happy reading,
Charlon ♦︎
Charlon's Book Corner 