I love books and I don’t care who knows it.

“The books you read and the people you meet will determine where you are in five years.”

Charlie ‘Tremendous’ Jones.

Books are second only to relationships when it comes to the trajectory of our lives.

I set out with a goal of reading 52 books this year. In case you’re wondering, an 8.5 hour plane ride across the Atlantic last week helped me get back on track, and I’ve officially completed 28 books, putting me on pace to hit 52 for the year.

[Full disclosure: A couple books are pretty short, around 100 pages, so that’s lame, but I’ll work on getting my page count up, ok, you guys?]

So, I thought it was time for some musings on books.

1. For the first time, I’m reading more digital than physical books.

The count at this point is 18 digital to 10 hard copy. A few things to keep in mind:

• A number of those digital copies were free on Amazon or incredibly cheap. A few of these books I likely wouldn’t have purchased or read (although I enjoyed them) if it wasn’t for that. I’m a lover of free books.
• I lived overseas until last Monday. It’s costlier and more inconvenient to get my hands on books in Europe (especially when you’re in a country that mostly sells books written in Slovene and has practically no Christian or Business books in English).

2. I still prefer physical books.

Sitting in a chair and reading a Kindle book just isn’t the same as plopping down and gripping a compelling hard-copy book with both hands.

Also, saying, “It’s a real page swiper,” makes you sound like a complete idiot.

3. Transferring notes is the most underrated win of digital books.

I love having all of my Kindle highlights so easily accessible. I practically never reference old books to note my markings. I think underlining and highlighting is helpful even if you don’t return to them, but being able to reference them with Cmd – F is a dream come true.

4. I suck at documenting physical books into my book-documenting system.

Half of the books I’ve read have absolutely no notes on them in Evernote. I’m a total hypocrite here. I’ll hopefully take the time to add the notes, but there’s little chance I’ll add most of my highlights from the hard copy books because it’s such a pain.

5. Borrowing digital books is still too hard.

Libraries have lending systems and certain Kindle books can be lent to your friends. I’m down with the digital revolution but I still have no clue how to do either of those things. I’m guessing the majority of people are clueless here too. I’ve borrowed 4 books this year (not including the absolute crap-ton I just picked up from the library, God bless it.) and 0% of those borrowed books were digital.

This process needs to be streamlined. Books are meant to be shared, no matter what form they come in.

6. Digital books devalue books.

I have never paid full-price for anything, especially not a book. The sticker price is way too high ($35 for a new hard cover, come on, man!), but the Kindle price is undoubtedly too low.

For some perspective, an HD movie rental on iTunes for new releases costs $6 for a 24-hour viewing period of some movie that in all likelihood is a waste of my time. When you live abroad and rental options are limited (Redbox isn’t worldwide, yet), you just have to bite the bullet for some movie viewing action.

(Aside: I’ll always pay the extra $1 to have HD over SD. It’s like deciding if you want to rent a Geo Tracker for $30 a day or a BMW 525 for $31. Pay the extra dollar, man).

A $6-10 digital book is not as much of an instant buy for me. Part of this is because my ratio of books owned to books read is probably 2:1 and I know I can just will myself to pick up an older book. The other part is because I’m almost positive it will go on sale, or I can get it from the library, or I can get a used physical copy for that price.

Good books are worth more than $6, and we (readers, authors, publishers) have to find some middle ground between getting it into as many hands as possible for free (or close to it) and providing the author practically no money for their writing and forcing them to make their living selling their own brand of Fat Grilling Machines.

7. We need an appealing way to display digital libraries.

I judge a book by its cover. I judge a person by the book covers in their library even more so. I love being able to peruse other people’s libraries so I can make snap judgment about the likelihood of our friendship working out. (Just kidding. Kind of.)

Scrolling through a list of book names on an old-school, non-Fire Kindle is lame. Looking at the book covers being displayed on an iPad or smart phone is barely better.

I’m not sure if it will ever exist, but some way to project the digital book titles we own into a bookshelf or display them on a TV would be awesome. We need this. Someone go make it and don’t even worry about crediting me. I’ll buy it. Just send me the link.

8. Reading a lot of books is not compatible with doing other time-consuming things.

Like trying to learn a language, maintain a blog, have a happy wife and a social life.

Any time I focused more on language learning, my reading went down. The same with writing and having friends. Being committed to books is a full-time job if you want to read a set number. I need to get better at picking and choosing what to do when.

Question: Have digital books changed your perspective on books, publishing or reading?

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