Paper Books vs. e-books vs "librebooks?"
Sun 08 February 2026
I took a few days of a break from the fediverse to try to do a mini digital detox, to stop zombiescrolling youtube, and to read more. I picked up a used copy of Michael Jan Friedman's Gauntlet, the first book in the Stargazer series, a Star Trek novel that covers Jean-Luc Picard's early captaincy. I was wanting to read more about that era of that character's life, as my interest in the character was piqued by watching Star Trek: Picard, particularly the second season.
I do have a mini review up on Bookwyrm for those who are curious. It was... easy (and surprisingly fast) to read, but not great. I was tempted to buy the rest of the series, but I don't think I will. I'm intrigued to know how certain plot elements will be resolved by the rest of the series, but I was disappointed by some things, particularly (no spoilers) the author's two-dimensional thinking when it came to maneuvering in three-dimensional space.
While I was reading, I was pondering the now rather old debate between physical books and e-books. I used to be very gung-ho about e-books, because of the conveniences they provide, but I've been more gun shy about giving Amazon and Lex Lutho—*cough*—Jeff Bezos more control of my life. While reading this most recent paper book, I made a mental list of the pros and cons of both formats:
- Paper books
- Pros
- Convenient: no battery to charge, no app to install, immediate and (relatively) portable.
- Freedom: once you own it, you own it. You cannot lose it unless you physically misplace it, or it's stolen
- Shareable: You can buy/sell physical books used, and share them with a friend, which you cannot with most e-books
- Useful for digital detox: an e-book reader is, admittedly, a very low distraction device, but it isn't a no-distraction device. A book is.
- Cons
- Weight: A single paperback book might be lighter than some e-readers, but a stack of them definitely won't be
- Space: Even a small personal library of books takes up a lot of space, and requires both funds and energy to transport when moving
- Inflexibility: You can't change the font size, font styling, or layout of physical books. Also most books don't lie flat on their own, and require you to hold it, or to use some kind of book holder.
- Aging: digital data is decidedly not permanent, especially when dealing with capricious locked-down services and DRM, but books physically age, and somewhat rapidly, unless they're manufactured and treated in a particular way. The book I purchased is only 20 years old, but the pages were quite yellowed, especially near the edges.
- Pros
- E-books
- Pros
- Incredible convenience: Books are purchased with just a few taps in the e-book reader itself, and appear in your library in seconds, rather than minutes or days (depending on whether you're shopping for books in-person or online). There is no need to manage a physical or electronic library, everything is completely automatic and easy. Also, most e-book readers have a built-in light, so illumination is usually not an issue.
- Flexibility: Since nearly all e-book formats are basically just a zipped-up collection of XHTML files along with some extra metadata (and sometimes encryption, sadly, more on that in a bit), the font size and style can be changed dynamically, along with layout options like margins. If you forget your reading glasses (IYKYK), you an just bump up the font size and keep reading. Those with dyslexia can switch the font to OpenDyslexic and (hopefully) have an easier time reading.
- Cons
- Dependence on digital devices: even the best digital devices (e-readers, etc) have battery limitations and limitations in durability and operational lifetimes. A well-made physical book will last for centuries. An e-reader will last for handful decades, at best. Given the impermanence and flux of the online services they are dependent on, two decades of useful life is quite optimistic.
- Illiberality: nearly all e-books sold today (especially e-books sold from online e-book sellers that are bundled with e-book readers) include DRM. They cannot be shared, they cannot be resold, they cannot be copied, and they cannot be meaningfully preserved.
- Pros
Interestingly, there is a middle-ground between these two extremes which is worth considering. This is what I'd like to call "librebooks," or in other words, e-books that have been liberated from their DRM bonds. This involves either finding an e-book from a store that doesn't include DRM (sadly quite rare), buying from boutique e-book sellers that never use DRM, or buying an e-book from a typical e-book seller and then using software to strip the DRM (can be quite tricky to set up, only works with some stores, and can often break as e-book sellers engage in an arms race against deDRM tools), or buying a book from a store and then downloading the same book from a "Shadow library" and loading that copy onto your e-book reader.
This middle-ground solution combines some of the best pros from physical books and e-books, while avoiding most of the cons of both, but comes with its own cons:
- "Librebooks"
- Pros
- Convenient: Almost all of the conveniences of regular e-books
- Flexibility: All of the flexibility of regular e-books, and perhaps a bit more, because there is more that you can do to modify and reformat non-DRMed or deDRMed e-books, if you so desire.
- Freedom: Like physical books, a librebook cannot be taken from you, and it can be shared with your friends.
- Longevity: as long as you are good at managing your data, your e-books will never go away. You can keep them through untold decades as the usual suspect of e-book sellers come and go. As e-book servers eventually go offline, your e-books stay put.
- Cons
- Usually no on-e-reader store: you have to procure the e-books and load them on your device through a process that varies in complexity depending on how it is procured
- Still dependent on digital devices: It's still not paper. But you have backups, right? Right? 😄
- Legal gray areas: It's theoretically possible that you may have to provide evidence that your e-book was procured legally, and not "pirated". This is an unfortunate reality, although quite unlikely.
- Pros
I'm still hashing out how I want to enjoy my books. There's something nice about the physicality and uniqueness of a lightweight paperback. Not that paperbacks are unique in the sense of being largely physically different from each other, but each one has its own cover, which is always "on." They are also single-purpose devices, so when you're holding a copy of Don Quixote, for example, that is all you have. It's not a whole library of books to select from, but just a single one. The singleness of that is refreshing, in a liberating-inconvenience kind of way.
I love the idea of librebooks, but the procurement, management, and fighting with DRM aspect of it is a bit of a bummer. That may be a silly attitude, though, as the road to hell is paved with conveniences.
However you choose to enjoy your books, enjoy them well. =)
Category: Books Tagged: Books Entertainment Ethics Hobbies Non-religious post Non-technical post Philosophy
Modified image of a stack of thinkpads taken originally from https://old.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comments/17xf8kl/my_thinkpad_stack/