The Sword and Laser discussion

I've done this for a few books, including D.M. Cornish's new book Factotum.

E-books are now my favored format. Just too damned convenient. But some books are just too special or beautiful to not have the paper version as well. Plus, in the past four months I've picked up about 200+ books, mostly hardbacks, from Half-Price books and various thrift stores. And I wouldn't be surprised if end up buying the electronic version of some of them for the convenience as well.

I did when I first bought my Kindle years ago, out of habit, plus I missed the smell, and because I think they look good on a shelf. Then I realized... why? My shelf space is scarce and I could just use that money to buy more ebooks. But the main reason I have some books in both ebook and paper format was because I already had a huge backlog to go through in tree form, but by then I couldn't let go of my Kindle, so rebought them!

I still buy paper for short stories or some paperbacks here and there, mainly to have them around in case I go to places I don't want to take my Kindle in case of thievery or damage.

IM 100% electronic. I used to love the smell of books and I still do. I just hate how much space they take up in my house. I still have hard copies of Shakespeare and The Stand though,

I think I will be doing like many others may. All the money I am "saving" by going digital is going to go into buying "special" versions. For example I am buying a signed hard cover of Earth by David Brin.

I read on my kindle as exclusively as I can, some books still don't have e-versions, especially older ones. Some books I buy both paper and ebook. Depends on the book, a few authors I want paper for my collection; Butcher, Bujold, etc. Also there are authors my mother also reads, haven't been able to interest her in a kindle so far. So I pickup the paperback for her when it's out. :-)

I was given Cryoburn for Christmas. It came with a cd that had itself, the entire Vorkosigan series and lots of essays by Bujold in lots of different formats. I'm reading the ePub on my iPad while my daughter reads the hard copy. Hmmm, that was an awfully convenient christmas gift.

The cd said that it may be copied and shared, but not sold. An amazing position for a publisher to take.

Adrian wrote: "Honestly though, it all comes down to the cover for me, I have bought many physical books because I loved their covers,"

I know what you mean. And speaking of great covers (here goes my daily pitch for the Foundling's Tale series), I love these. Gorgeous, inviting, understated yet inviting palettes, and a great feeling of depth.

For books I really love I'll buy them in both audio and print editions because I like to experience them in both formats. As far as e-books go I've had my Kindle for all of two weeks, so I'm not sure how that'll work, I imagine it will come down price, availability, boredom while at Borders with a coupon, and whether I want to carry around yet another tome when I could have my tiny Kindle instead.

That being said, I'll probably re-buy The Wheel of Time again, at least The Eye of the World, because I own that book (and a couple of the others) in every format.

I'm with Adrian and Bill on the cover thing as well. I still haven't cracked my copy of The Affinity Bridge but I sometimes just stare at the cover because it look so cool.

Kindle unless there is no e-version. I haven't bought a paper book for the last 6 months.

For me, it depends. For the A Song of Ice and Fire books, I have the first 2 in mass market paperback, the 3rd in big paperback, and the 4th in hardcover. I also have all 4 in audio format. And I'd like to get books 1-3 in hardcover at some point. And, at one point when I used ereader.com, I had books 1-3 from ereader for my old Palm Pilot. It's a similar story with the Wheel of Time books. I have them all in audio and in either paper or hardback.

When I read Infinite Jest, I originally bought it for my Kindle, but then went on a cruise and didn't want to risk ruining my Kindle, so I also bought a dead tree version of the book. I definitely appreciated the Kindle version for that one--it made it quick and easy to go to the right footnotes and back again, and it was significantly lighter than the dead tree version. :D

So really, it depends on what the book is and how much I'm enjoying it (or not). There are a fair few others that I have in more than one format, usually for the purpose of reading one in Kindle format and one in dead tree. Or one in audio and one in a printed medium.

I did this one time, to read the same book both places to see which method worked better for me. That's when I borrowed a kindle from work. I found myself racing through on the device, and when I read Neuromancer in print it was like I'd never read it before. Not to be resistant to technology, but I clearly absorb analog on a higher plane.

Has anyone else discovered this? I've found that if I set my type really small, it feels and reads more like a book. Course, the ability to do this depends on the available light and where I'm at (the train, work, home, etc.)

I keep my Kindle font size set to the second-smallest. That seems the most comfortable one for me.