ebooks — Blog — Sarah Elisabeth Writes

I don’t use my Kindle Touch every day. I still try to keep the number of books I’m reading at any given time down to three or less. Sometimes that includes all paperback. But the novel I’m reading now, The Restorer's Son- Expanded Edition (The Sword of Lyric) was an ARC in digital form. (ARC=Advance Reader Copy. Loving the story, I’m in the hands of a master author).

That brings me to newly discovered benefits about my Kindle Touch.

1. Treadmill reading. Man. Can I say how good it feels to watch the minutes ticking away, wishing they would slow down instead of speed up? More than once, I’ve gone over my exercise time because I needed to finish the chapter. And how the chapter ends is usually torture and I have to read a few more pages. No wonder my weight is decent right now.

2. Battery life. If I turn off the wi-fi when I’m not using it, the battery lasts on and on. I’ve only charged it a handful of times since purchase. I love being able to grab it for a road trip and not have to panic that I forgot the charger.

3. No backlight. Sure, there are times I wish for an option to light up the screen. (Though have you ever thought of lighting up the pages of a paper book?) But honestly, I’m glad there isn’t. I work on the computer eight to tens hours a day. I want my reading time to be a different experience.

4. Easy organization. After my recent marathon of editing my forty flash fiction stories in prep for release as an ebook—and print—my Kindle home was a mess. I had sent the docs to it for final review and everything looked scrambled afterwards.

I spent a few minutes separating books I’d gotten from Amazon recently and deleting the edited docs. In just a few minutes, dozens of titles were sorted in their categories and the home screen now looks clean and simple. I like clean and simple.

5. Unexpected updates. I don’t love everything about the Kindle Touch, as I said before, but it was still great. I’d heard updates were few and never, so I wasn’t expecting improvements. But then Kindle released some nice additions.

My favorite was what should have been in the first place—the ability to turn the reader horizontal. It doesn’t do it automatically, which I like. It’s nice to hold it sideways sometimes, depending on my reading position. Also in the updates, I noticed my Touch is even faster than before.

Missed my 8 Cool Things About the Kindle Touch? Read it here.

Question: Have you stepped into the world of e-readers yet? What do you love/hate about the digital revolution?