I much prefer tapping the edge of a page vs moving my entire hand/arm to turn a page. +1 for digital for ease of turn.
Quick random access to different parts of a book? A digital table of contents that I can bring up anytime and instantly tap to go to the section? Much faster than finding the TOC in the beginning, reading the page number, then hunting around for the actual page. Ugh. +1 Digital.
How about randomly jumping around the book? All reader apps I use have a scrubber at the bottom, I just drag that wherever I like and boom, instant. Just like thumbing through the book. Many advanced readers will even show a live preview of the page as I scrub! +1 Digital.
Add in the ability to scale font sizes (+1 digital), adjustable line heights (+1 digital), adjustable margins (+1 digital), Text-to-speech (+1 digital), non-destructive highlights and annotations (+1 digital), tappable footnotes and references (+1 digital), unlimited bookmarks (+1 digital), adjustable bg/fg color and lighting (+1 digital), self backlit (+1 digital), and the ability to have THOUSANDS of books in a few ounces. It's no contest.
And 5" too small? I think it is the perfect size. Easy for one-handed use.
I generally prefer reading on my phone/tablets for the portability/convenience/has own light aspects, but I feel like there's a few things the physical book has:
- a subtle but constant reminder of your position in the book, that gives you one more thing to mentally index by when looking back into the book ("I think it was about 1/3 of the way in, on the bottom of the right-hand page), and also gives you a very definite sense of How Much Book Is Left in a more subtle way than a BIG SLIDER AT THE BOTTOM OF THE SCREEN ALL THE TIME
- the ability of the book designer to make choices about fonts that subtly accentuate the book's mood
- footnotes, I miss footnotes so fucking bad sometimes. I do all my e-reading on the Kindle app and it doesn't fucking have footnotes, it just has tiny little superscript links that take you to endnotes, which makes what can sometimes be a quick entertaining authorial aside into a laborious hassle of stabbing at the tiny link multiple times until you actually click it. Especially if it's within the area where tapping will turn the page, so you go to the next page, grumble, go back, repeat 5 times, finally click on footnote, realize you've kind of forgotten the immediate context of the footnote while trying to tap it.
Quick random access to different parts of a book? A digital table of contents that I can bring up anytime and instantly tap to go to the section? Much faster than finding the TOC in the beginning, reading the page number, then hunting around for the actual page. Ugh. +1 Digital.
How about randomly jumping around the book? All reader apps I use have a scrubber at the bottom, I just drag that wherever I like and boom, instant. Just like thumbing through the book. Many advanced readers will even show a live preview of the page as I scrub! +1 Digital.
Add in the ability to scale font sizes (+1 digital), adjustable line heights (+1 digital), adjustable margins (+1 digital), Text-to-speech (+1 digital), non-destructive highlights and annotations (+1 digital), tappable footnotes and references (+1 digital), unlimited bookmarks (+1 digital), adjustable bg/fg color and lighting (+1 digital), self backlit (+1 digital), and the ability to have THOUSANDS of books in a few ounces. It's no contest.
And 5" too small? I think it is the perfect size. Easy for one-handed use.