In terms of the actual reading of the words the author wants to impart, no, I don’t think any electronic book takes away from the experience of reading a book. You still fall into the story (or not), fall in love with the characters (or not), and appreciate the prose (or not). The entire essence of the story is there exactly how the author intends.

However, there are a few pros and cons between hard copy and electronic copy versions of books.

The huge positive of eBooks is that you can carry as many as you want with you wherever you go and the weight never changes. It’s useful and helpful and promotes reading a great deal. Some small positives are the capability of altering text size and font, highlighting passages without affecting the book, and linking directly to sequels and review pages, etc.

The biggest negative of eBooks is memory incapability. And I don’t mean misremembering the contents of the book itself. I’m referring to matching up the book’s contents with the title and author of said book. When reading hard copy, you must physically pick up the book where you see the cover art, the author name and the book title all at once on a constant basis. When using an eBook, there isn’t even a byline or header or footer to give you even a portion of that information to remind you.

I’ve personally had difficulty remembering author and title names of plenty books I only read as eBooks. This is something I’m rectifying by writing down the books I read and that’s incredibly helpful, but it does require a little more effort. I will also buy hard copy versions of books I love because I don’t want the chance that “my” eBook version might be corrupted or taken from me at some point.

So, no, I don’t think reading eBooks take away from the experience. However, I will always buy something I can hold whenever I end up falling in love with a story.

~Emmi