The popularity of e-book readers increased enormously during the course of 2009. The launch of the Amazon Kindle 2.0 and its larger sibling, the Kindle DX, followed up by competing readers such as the Nook from Barnes and Noble and the Sony Daily Edition reader in the last six months of the year, put both e-book readers and e-books firmly on the map. By the beginning of 2010 there was a good range of e-book readers for potential customers to pick from – including the Apple iPad, which includes e-book reader functionality amongst its many options.

Now that e-book readers have been taken up by “early adopters”, the next batch of potential customers will come from more conventional book readers. Although you can already find reviews of e-book readers online, and increasingly in newspapers and magazines, the present crop of customers are almost certainly more interested to discover how e-book readers measure up against “real” books and not just how they compare with different e-book readers. They want to know if they will miss the feel of a paper book.

Actually, the e-ink display technology which is used in the latest e-book readers is actually extremely good. It provides a reading experience which is nothing like reading on a computer monitor – it is much more akin to reading stock text printed on paper.

When you “turn the page” on an e-book reader, it flickers and goes dark just for an instant. However, these page turns are much faster now than they were as little as a year ago. After just a few reading sessions you won’t notice them at all. In truth, when you’re engrossed in a good book, you will be entirely unaware of the fact that you’re reading it on an electronic device rather than leafing through the pages of a more conventional paper edition.

Most e-book readers are very effortless to use. A recent survey of American e-book reader users found that 80% of them actually preferred using their e-book readers to reading a regular book. That’s a fairly solid endorsement – but in view of how simple e-book readers are to handle one-handed, on a crowded plane or bus, or sitting propped up on the sofa – it’s perhaps less surprising than it looks at first glance.

Over and above from the various advantages of the e-book reader hardware, the e-books to read on them are cheaper than traditional books. They don’t make use of paper, ink or bindings and there are no (or very small) delivery fees. They are also, for exactly the same reasons, much more environmentally friendly than paper books – even when the materials and energy used in the construction and delivery of the readers themselves are taken into account.

E-book readers, all things considered, have a lot to recommend them. They are the future of reading and, if you get through a book a week or so, could well prove to be cheaper than paper books. In the end, it’s a matter of personal preference – but an e-book reader may well be an option which you should give some thought to.

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