Ever since the Amazon Kindle came out and the popularity of ebooks rose, the dilemma of whether to buy hard copies of books or their ebook equivalent became a more pronounced challenge for me.

The advantages of getting the ebook version of a book I like would be the following:

• Quicker acquisition – Kindle or other ebooks could easily be downloaded over the web and on to my PC or to my future Amazon Kindle device. It saves up on shipping costs and from the greedy Customs people in my country.
• Lower price – Naturally, ebooks are almost 50% cheaper compared to their printed counterparts, sometimes ebooks are downloadable for free.
• Space saver – To date I have approximately 90 books at home and already, I’m starting to see the need to have more space for additional book shelves to place them all. This is a non-issue with eBooks, I could store a thousand in my PC or future Kindle device.
• Friendlier to trees – Most would say that ebooks are more eco-friendly compared to printed ones because they consume no paper, ink and other packaging materials. However, ebooks are electronic in nature thus requiring electricity to read which in turn burns up fossil fuels so the saved trees could be outweighed by the amount of carbon produced.

On the other hand, a printed book gives you the following goodies:

• Books are personal – The magical feeling of holding a book is sometimes just indescribable. The smell, texture and weight of a book adds another dimension to the reading experience. You get nothing of this from eBooks even when you’re using a Kindle device.
• Books are social – Books can shared with your friends, classmates and fellow bibliophiles. Most often, a great amount of books read by someone came to him by borrowing or swapping it with others. You can’t do that with ebooks because of the restrictive digital rights management software/technologies or your friend must have a PC or a ebook reader in order to read it.
• Books grow in value over time – The older a book the more precious it becomes both in sentimental and monetary values, especially rare and out-of-print books. One dream I have is to leave behind a library of books to my grandchildren and no ebook can replace a printed one in achieving this dream.

At present, and after looking back on what I’ve written so far, it’s kind of obvious that I’m leaning towards getting the printed books over their ebook versions. Though I confess that the price difference is what’s keeping me torn in between.

What’s your take on the matter? Do you face the same dilemma? Share your thoughts on comments below.