travelaround said:
I like my Kindle Paperwhite and have owned it six years with no problems. That said, at this point I prefer paperback books. If you buy an Audible audiobook or Kindle ebook and want to share it with a friend or give it away, you can't. Paperbacks, however, are sharable. Also, a lot of Kindle books are just as expensive as the paperbacks.
I can't say for audible because it's been years since I've had an account, but on kindle, yes you can. Many books are loanable. I've loaned books out and had books loaned to me multiple times.
Re expense, I've found few kindle e-books are as expensive as their paper- or hardback cousins. Mostly the newest books from major publishers, and even those when a sale is not operative. New books are actually often promoted at a significant discount. Where I find kindle e-books to be still expensive are especially with the classics from major publishers; for example Penguin's The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson is many decades old but still sells at full price.
However, I regularly pick up ordinarily pricey and often quite popular e-books at steep discounts, generally 2.99 or 3.99. I've gotten a few Steven Pinker books that way, Jon Ronson's "The Psychopath Test," "Salt, A world History," "Anatomy of an Epidemic," (Penguin and Random House), Smoke and Pickles, The Witches Vaccuum Cleaner, Slow Cooker Revolution (America's Test Kitchen), The Mythology Book, How to Cook Everything Basics (mark Bittman), Hungry Men, Prisoners of Geography, A Splendid Exchange: How Trade Shaped the World; The Little Book of Talent, Naming Names ... etc etc.
Plus don't forget that there are multiple organizations putting out free books available through Amazon and elsewhere, in the tens of thousands. Pretty much all the old classics are available for free, and the same thing is going on with audiobooks -- all of which can be read/played on the kindle fire, and the books can be read on any kindle or other e-reader.
You can also carry thousands of books in your pocket with an e-reader, and borrow e-books from e-libraries across the country either free or for a nominal membership fee.
The one thing I would put aside e-books for is books with maps or complex visual requirements, like detailed charts. Maps are much harder to read on even the biggest e-readers, and sometimes not carefully transferred over into e-book format. Tables/spreadsheets in e-book form rather than, say, MS Word or equivalent are much harder to read too.
