Paperback or kindle / iPad? Do you prefer real books?

I conducted a little experiment earlier this year on an avid book reader to see what she really thought about new technology. She said there is nothing like the feel of paper when reading a romantic love story or a gripping thriller. Let’s see what unfolded.

For the sake of anonymity let’s call this lady Carol, she could get through a good solid paperback in no time and then shared stories over tea about the twists and turns. When asked about the Kindle she first said “What? Do you mean kindling… for the fire” and then resisted any reasons I gave about the benefits. “It’s light, you can store thousands of books on it, books are cheap, it remembers which page you were last at, you can bookmark pages and search for the meanings of words” I urged, but Carol was adamant and a little sad for the poor ol’ paperback.

A week later the Kindle I ordered arrived in the mail and I got to work on learning how to use it, pressing a couple buttons, connecting to Amazon and before long I got the hang of navigating around it. After downloading a novel that Carol wanted to read, I took it with me one visit, showed it to her, taught her the simple steps for using it and left it with her.

Another week went by and Carol was quite impressed with it, another month later the kindle had traveled with Carol and the relationship between Carol and her Kindle became very strong. I gifted her the Kindle and now they are together and happy.

Just like Grandpa Jack, the moral is that when people use new technology without the barrier of paying for it before learning how it works, they give it a go and try to understand the benefits.