Paper vs. Ebooks: can’t it be both?

We often hear about ebooks mentioned as opposed to paper books, as if the two were mutually exclusive. But false dichotomies are so limiting, don’t you think? Why pit one against the other? Isn’t reading the important thing, no matter how you do it? Can’t we love both paper books and our ebook reader? Hashtag LoveIsLove! ❤

Our philosophy, although we admit to having a slight preference for ebooks, 😉 can be fairly well summed up by the famous line “a rose by any other name would smell as sweet” — whether paper or electronic, the source of the pleasure is in the reading! In fact we’d even say the two are often complementary, each version having its own advantages and inconvenients.

We were curious to know how you felt about the question and a quick twitter poll later we had our answer. 🙂 Since twitter polls are limited to only 4 possible answers, and multiple selections aren’t possible, several of you pointed out that they couldn’t vote for their real preference, i.e. ALL the books, whether paper, e-, or audio. So, disclaimer, the poll results are not perfectly representative. 🙂 But overall there is a pretty clear trend confirming that when you love reading, you often love reading in any form, rather than loving specifically paper or specifically your ebook reader!

We asked the same question in french, with comparable results!

What about you? How do you like your books?

 

4 thoughts on “Paper vs. Ebooks: can’t it be both?

  1. I bought a cybook muse front light in Budapest because I had left my books home.
    Unfortunately, however, I am unable to download books in Italian, Amazon and any other book store that is not in French.
    Can you help me? Thank you
    Sandra

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    1. Hello Sandra,
      The on-board bookstore on your Cybook is the Bookeenstore, which currently only sells french-language books, however Cybook ereaders are compatible with the standard ebook format epub, that means you can buy ebooks in any language, from almost any online bookstore (except amazon, who only sell their own proprietary kindle format) and read them on your Cybook; simply download your books to your computer and transfer them to your Cybook via usb. Please make sure to install Adobe Digital Editions (free download here: http://www.adobe.com/uk/solutions/ebook/digital-editions/download.html) and authorise your Cybook and your computer USING THE SAME ADOBE ID for both, this is very important! Then you’ll be able to read any ebooks you like.
      If you need any further technical assistance please don’t hesitate to contact our support here: https://service.bookeen.com/en/&languageid=1
      Happy reading!

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      1. Hi Sandra,
        to authorise your Cybook, just plug it into the usb cable while ADE is open. ADE will see the Cybook and propose to authorise it to your account: click to accept. You can verify the Cybook has been properly authorised by checking in ADE “Help > Authorisation information” (or something similar to that, my ADE is in French) or on your Cybook, go to the home screen then center button > Menu > About > Adobe Reader Mobile (you should see your Adobe ID there).
        I hope that answers your question. 🙂

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