I am of the understanding that buying books online is hardly worth anything because you don’t actually own anything. Maybe you own the digital file? I’m not sure. I don’t trust the longevity of it, though.
I’m told a lot (mainly by my Dad) that its a good idea to print those out to keep them. However, I’m talking about books that are easily 200+ pages.
I don’t know if its worth the ink or money to print them out. At that point would it be better to just buy a book?
Ask yourself why you need a physical copy after you’ve read it once. Some books you can come back to and reread, but all books? Not likely. Once you’ve read a book like Hunger Games who cares if 25 years from now President Bezos takes his digital copy back from you? Space in your house is finite. Don’t fill it just to fill it. Curate your books.
I agree with this in principle but for me personally I have owned a tablet reader early on and tried to use it but just couldn’t read consistently. I tried again when they switched to the non glare paper white screens thinking maybe that’s what kept me from reading digital like I do paper but I still just couldn’t bring myself to read after a while. I tried to force myself to do it but I just can’t get engrossed in a digital file. I gave both of those readers away to people in the hopes that they could use them and wrote off my losses.
I buy cheap mass market paper back books usually and store them in boxes and if I read them twice and I really like it I might switch to a hardback edition and throw them on my nice shelves. They take up space yeah but for me its a choice between buying physical books or not reading at all basically.