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The Case Against E-readers -- Why Digital Natives Prefer Reading On Paper
HughPickens.com writes: Michael Rosenwald writes in the WaPo that textbook makers, bookstore owners and college student surveys all say millennials still strongly prefer reading on paper for pleasure and learning. This bias surprises reading experts, given the same group's proclivity to consume most other content digitally. "These are people who aren't supposed to remember what it's like to even smell books," says Naomi S. Baron. "It's quite astounding." Earlier this month, Baron published Words Onscreen: The Fate of Reading in a Digital World, a book that examines university students' preferences for print and explains the science of why dead-tree versions are often superior to digital (PDF).
Her conclusion: readers tend to skim on screens, distraction is inevitable and comprehension suffers. Researchers say readers remember the location of information simply by page and text layout — that, say, the key piece of dialogue was on that page early in the book with that one long paragraph and a smudge on the corner. Researchers think this plays a key role in comprehension — something that is more difficult on screens, primarily because the time we devote to reading online is usually spent scanning and skimming, with few places (or little time) for mental markers.
Another significant problem, especially for college students, is distraction. The lives of millennials are increasingly lived on screens. In her surveys, Baron was surprised by the results to the question of whether students were more likely to multitask in hard copy (1 percent) vs. reading on-screen (90 percent). "When a digital device has an Internet connection, it's hard to resist the temptation to jump ship."
Her conclusion: readers tend to skim on screens, distraction is inevitable and comprehension suffers. Researchers say readers remember the location of information simply by page and text layout — that, say, the key piece of dialogue was on that page early in the book with that one long paragraph and a smudge on the corner. Researchers think this plays a key role in comprehension — something that is more difficult on screens, primarily because the time we devote to reading online is usually spent scanning and skimming, with few places (or little time) for mental markers.
Another significant problem, especially for college students, is distraction. The lives of millennials are increasingly lived on screens. In her surveys, Baron was surprised by the results to the question of whether students were more likely to multitask in hard copy (1 percent) vs. reading on-screen (90 percent). "When a digital device has an Internet connection, it's hard to resist the temptation to jump ship."
Having the ability to touch any word on the screen and have definitions, translations, and wikipedia entries pop up as you read (which is great for many of the older books) is a fantastic benefit over and beyond the simple fact that so many of the world's classics are available free of charge wherever you have internet access is a bonus that can't be overlooked. Honestly, in terms of studying books such as Gibbon's Fall of the Roman Empire, I find myself eternally grateful for such capabilities. Not to mention, if you can read the book on your cell phone, you always have the right reading material on the toilet. :)
Sugapablo
The entire supposition that we're all mildly autistic ADHD scatterbrains is idiotic. Anyone who's picked up an e-reader versus a book can easily tell what their preferences are, and millenials aren't some new mutant genotype.
But I'm not, and eBooks are awesome. I don't have physical space for dead trees in my house, and I can't imagine millenials are doing any better. Let's face it, most stuff we read for pleasure doesn't need to be recalled with anything other than casual clarity. We're not hanging on to carefully wordsmithed literature, we're reading mass market fiction with a good story but relatively low literary value.
Publishers need to return their money to the shareholders so the rest of the world can get on with life.
I only skimmed the summary.
In her surveys, Baron was surprised by the results to the question of whether students were more likely to multitask in hard copy (1 percent) vs. reading on-screen (90 percent). "When a digital device has an Internet connection, it's hard to resist the temptation to jump ship."
So get a Sony e-Reader (now super-cheap due to being abandoned) or a Nook Simple touch. They technically have internet access, but you can't really browse on them. Not because of the display, because of the browser.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Considering that most likely 2/3 of the people polled are textbook publishers and bookstore owners, and 1/3 students that isn't a surprising finding, How about JUST polling readers.
I can be distracted while reading a paper book just as easily as I can be distracted while reading on my Kindle.
Something smells funny here... you might almost think they didn't look at dedicated e-readers at all, but only at multifunction devices such as phones or tablets. Nah, no researcher would be that sloppy, right?
Who exactly funded this research again?
#DeleteChrome
Searching is the killer app of e-readers (or just PDFs) to me. Even if I have a physical book, which is sometimes easier to reference, I like having a PDF that I can search in. Fiction, nonfiction, reference manual...doesn't matter, still want search.
My librarian wife and I are both pretty avid readers and we both use e-readers for vast majority of our reading. Inevitably someone will see us in the doctor office waiting room or some other place reading our ebooks and tell us how they prefer "real books". That's when I like to ask them what the last book they read was and chuckle to myself when they get that deer in the headlights look.
There needs to be a distinction made between E Ink vs LCD/OLED screens.
Whilst I'm not a millennial, I do enjoy reading. I can't really get into reading large amounts of text on an LCD or OLED screen whereas I read almost every night on a Kindle with an E Ink screen. On the other hand, I can't enjoy reading news and current affairs on the Kindle - it's better on an iPad or computer screen.
Reading on a Kindle is a lot more like reading a dead tree book. There are less distractions and the screen is easier on your eyes, particularly when reading in bright sunlight or in a darkened room.
Anyone reading screens at night should already have an automatic redshifter installed, unless you explicitly need to stay awake for some reason. I use them for all my desktops, laptops and tablets.
The difference on your eyes is, pun intended, night and day.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
I prefer eBooks for pleasure reading because of the convenience of packaging mostly. I like the fact that I can take a whole library of books with me and choose which ones I read on a whim. Reading for pleasure is also a serial activity where you read through the book from start to finish with very little back flipping. For studying however, I prefer the physical books as you can dog-ear, color-code post-it, highlight sections for quick reference. Yes eReaders have search and bookmarking capabilities, but I just don't find it as convenient as going back to my yellow post-it half way in the last chapter which I've scribbled with a keyword.
Our Corgi chewed up my entire GOT collection but won't touch an e-reader.
love is just extroverted narcissism
For me, being able to haul around thousands of books and references on a 200 gram e-ink device that goes weeks on a single charge, syncs my current page to all other devices, allows access to dictionaries and wikipedia, and allows easy annotations outweighs all other potential benefits of classic books.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
But I always buy the textbook. If the class is just one semester, I buy a used copy.
Same goes for reference texts.
The rest I get at the library or a bookstore. Paperbacks preferred, but Picketty's Capital isn't out in paperback yet.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I like having and reading physical books. I really can't explain why, so I do not have much to contribute.
Having the ability to touch any word on the screen and have definitions, translations, and wikipedia entries pop up as you read (which is great for many of the older books) is a fantastic benefit over and beyond the simple fact that so many of the world's classics are available free of charge wherever you have internet access is a bonus that can't be overlooked. Honestly, in terms of studying books such as Gibbon's Fall of the Roman Empire, I find myself eternally grateful for such capabilities.
I agree wholeheartedly that the eBook experience *could* be much better than physical books, but it isn't.
As an experiment, I recently picked up a reader and tried it (Sony eReader). Here's what I found:
All in all, I haven't used my eReader much.
It might be OK for narrative stories, light paperback reading that you can do in a dentist's office, and if it's a modern eBook written with proper formatting, but for anything remotely sophisticated it's insufficient.
I'm more interested in what this says about the Washington Post than the book. Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post. TFA is a book review with a link to Amazon, where you can buy the book. I wonder if this is part of the owner's strategy to make the paper profitable. And why does the entire article ignore the difference between color displays and e-ink?
I do not block ads. I do block third party scripts.
I use electronic readers for work/hobby related reference material, however I'll always buy paperback novels when travelling. That's my preference when reading for pleasure.
People with poor self control prefer limits on their behavior. I guess they have enough self control to recognize their own deficiencies, but not enough to fix them.
What's with the "dead tree" crap? How about the "easy to flip thru" or "fun to use" version? After all, you don't refer to the popcorn you are eating while reading Slashdot as the "dead seed" snack.
but my LFR queue just popped.
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
Holy hell am I ever sick and tired of the term "digital native".
I grew up in the 1970s and 1980s. My first computer was a TI-99 4/A with 16 K of RAM. Then a Commodore 128, Amiga, etc. I've been a "digital native" as long as I can remember.
I went back to university a few years ago (when I was in my 30s), and those digital native kids that I was taking classes with? Well they couldn't compute their way out of a paper bag. Sure they might know how to use Facebook - but native? Hardly. They still didn't understand the difference between a hard drive and RAM ... and they still made all the same bone-headed mistakes using a computer as their clueless peers in the 1990s made (hey! I just got a weird email with an attachment! Let me open it and see what it is!)
After graduating, I ended up working for the university, helping profs integrate and use technology in their courses - and every prof was under the mistaken assumption that these kids were somehow technologically gifted, just by virtue of having been born in the late 80s/early 90s.
Ridiculous. Kids today aren't digital natives.
Either boomers and millennials are completely different, the millennials need to try a REAL e-reader or I'm unusual. I like reading on my e-ink Kindle with no back-light better than reading a printed book.
Bacon is BAD for you? NOOOO!!!! I REFUSE to believe it!!!
it seems like for most people, digital reading is fine when it's just "straight ahead" fiction reading. you're approaching the material linearly and with the exception of a couple of flip backs every now and again, you're just going from start to finish one page at a time. i read almost all my novels like this.
it's really different if you're reading a textbook or manual where you might have to access information in a wide variety of places at any moment. in such cases, books tend to be better and faster because you can go immediately to any page that you've dog eared or even by pure muscle memory remember about where it is relative to the thickness of the book. and page flips are instant. try flipping 25 pages with a book looking for information and then doing the same on a kindle. screen refresh on e-paper is still VASTLY inferior to a moist thumb. even in this day, there's all kinds of inexplicable delays in just going to page 124 on digital vs on paper. paper really is superior for instantly going to any page and the interface for doing that is faaaaaaaar better with paper.
there are ways to get close to this speed on a pc or a laptop but only by really changing up the paradigm of how one searches a book for information - i.e. not flipping pages looking but explicitly using the search function. and in any case where you would be looking through the glossary, digital would be better and faster.
not to mention that taking notes on the book pages itself is better and faster in analog. lots of apps where you CAN do this... but none of them are as fast as hiliter and pen in hand.
for learning things like programming, or a graphics program or even the dungeon master's guide, if i could choose only one medium, i prefer paper books with pens and sticky notes and hiliters. ideally though, i'd have both.
f.lux
No, I am not swearing at you. The software is research based also, not just a gimmick.
Of course this does not mean it is 100% bulletproof
E-books should cost 20% of what the current charges are.
Was going to buy an electronic copy of a book I own (after seeing it mentioned on /.) for easier access, but $50 for a hardcover is absurd when there is a copy somewhere in one of my boxes somewhere, and no electronic versions were available.
My wife has no objections to re-buying some titles, but it is absurd.
Same here. My Sony e-reader is great at the beach and it's obvious the survey is conflating people who use e-readers with people who try to read books on an iPad. Not the same thing at all. The e-reader is clearly inferior to a book for non-fiction containing maps and photos, but for works of fiction it's just as immersive if not more so than a paper book.
On desktops and laptops I use redshift-gtk. It sits in the background and gradually adjusts the gamma of your screen based on your longitude/latitude and the time of day. There is an icon in the system tray that you can click to manually turn it off to see the difference or if you briefly have a need to see colour-accurate content.
I don't recall what one I have used for Android, though I have used Nightfilter in the past that works well (though manual).
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Even with the backlight turned right down? I have never seen this happen to such a degree that makes a redshifter ineffective, though I don't own a Kindle so perhaps it's specific to those.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
I don't recall what one I have used for Android, though I have used Nightfilter in the past that works well (though manual).
It's called twilight. It works pretty well, I haven't had any problems with it yet.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I like reading on screens because it keeps me awake. I also get a consistent reading experience without having to search for that corner with exactly the right light. And I can queue multiple books and magazines up in a device without adding to the weight, so I never run out of reading or forget to bring the book I'm on.
The summary makes no mention of e-readers and makes points that are not relevant to e-readers.
An e-readers is not simply a device that displays a book or magazine.
Then it will generally still work, will probably be cheap to replace, and in case it is damaged, it will still be at least nearly perfectly usable. In the case of my android tablet that I used to use for this, I made the mistake of leaving in on the floor next to the power socket whilst on charge (short power cable and all that), was enthusiastically showing a friend round my toy collection (toy=laptop/workstation/synth/etc) and accidently put my chairleg down on my android tablet. It still boots but touchscreen functionality doesn't work and, being a cheap tablet, usb otg didn't work properly anyway, so its now unusable. If it were a real book, it wouldn't even have broken! That's why I do not trust e-readers for books that are even remotely important: they are just too fragile and, even though I'm careful 99% of the time, there is that issue of the remaining 1% where even the most careful human doesn't have his (or her) brain engaged properly and is temporarily a complete klutz. Real paperware books are reasonably robust against issues of accidental clumsiness. And robustness saves lives! Seriously, suppose you're on the ISS and the only copy of the maintenance manual is accessible via an e-reader and you break it?
John_Chalisque
etc etc etc. People always forget the e-ink devices. probably because they're so boring and uncool and you can't Facebook or whatever the fuck on it. I really, really miss my PRS-300 and -600. I don't miss my tablets.
I wonder if this study would turn out any different if they excluded all tablets disguised as readers. E-ink only.
I understand that something like an iPad can be considered an e-reader, but I don't believe that it is. I believe a lot of people's problems stem from the fact that they use the term "e-reader" on devices that aren't exactly e-readers. Reading on an iPad is way different than reading on a Kobo or a Kindle with an e-Ink screen. They aren't these miraculous Internet devices that let you play games and surf all the distracting web sites. They don't have the glowing screen of an iPad and they aren't prone to losing battery power within a few hours. The text looks almost exactly like a real book, except it can often be reflowed so that it is larger and easier to read.
I Personally feel the user interface in ebook readers vs a physical book is completely lacking in features. Consider the following areas in which books certainly excel
1.)Browsing Around: A real book allows you to move forward or backward way more easily then small next/forward,scroll bar does on a ereader. Further when moving between pages, the discontinuous screen refresh in any ereader contributes to you loosing focus.
2.)Viewing Multiple Pages: On a real book you use your hand as a temporary bookmark to quickly jump between two pages, On a ereader this might involve navigating menus, waiting for screen refresh and other annoyances.
3.)Taking Notes: Handwriting beats typing any day for small notes which may contain figures, underlines Symbols. Even with a $1 pen beats any stylus out there.
Of course there are numerous areas where e-readers excel like augmented content, search tools, information to weight ratio etc. I am sure all these will change in time some with ui innovations and other with improved technology.
I am personally surprised no body used a physical knob(iWatch like but larger) for navigating between pages on a ereader.
"Having the ability to touch any word on the screen and have definitions, translations, and wikipedia entries pop up as you read (which is great for many of the older books) is a fantastic benefit "
And thus bring up thousand more distraction to break your reading. In my experience (having tested both) it is far far better for comprehension and reading "wellness" to simply note on a side paper what you want to search later and leave it there until you are finished reading. Unless there is a word which stops you understanding completely (which should be quite rare for the average book) this works well.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
redshift-gtk on Linux and f.lux on Windows (although nowadays there is an f.lux version for Linux, but I'm used to redshift). Both use geolocation/entered geographical coordinates to match the changing color balance to your local day night cycle, and have adjustable day and night color temperature. Both work very well and considerably reduce eyestrain when working at night, and are set-up once and forget. I recommend them to everyone who spends hours in front of a screen.
(for Android I have Screen Filter, it doesn't do the reddening but it does darken the screen beyond what the usual bright control can do.)
For anything that has pictures, charts, graphs or formulas, I definitely want the dead tree version. I can't imagine using a Kindle for my college textbooks or any technical manuals The zoom features aren't great and you're sometimes reading text on one page pertinent to a graphic on another page. I already regret having bought 'Capital in the 21st Century" as an e-book precisely for that reason.
For pure text, like a novel, the Kindle is awesome. Portable, comfortable to hold, long battery life. If you've ever read a really fat paperback (Mark Bowden's "Blackhawk Down" comes to mind), just holding the damned thing open is a pain. I love the fact that you can read the Kindle, say at breakfast, without having to use hands to hold the book open. Same with a stationary exercise machine. It's also nice that you can zoom on the text in case the motion of your head is making the print hard to read.
I think the best and most invaluable feature of having an e-reader is Project Gutenberg (gutenberg.org). Want to read or reference Nietzsche, Dante, Shakespeare, or go back and read Moby Dick, The Count of Monte Cristo or many other old classics? All free (and legal) via the web site.
Of course there's always the zombie apocalypse scenario where electricity would be hard to come by, but until then, the e-reader provides a lot of utility .
I 3D print all my books.
It's not "hard" in the sense that I couldn't read books before the e-readers, but still an unnecessary annoyance now that e-readers are available.
When I'm eating breakfast for instance, It's nice to not be using one hand to hold the book open.
Thinking of an tablet as an eReader is your problem. In my opinion a true eReader uses electronic ink technology, not a back-lit LCD screen. You do not get the 'keeps me awake' problem when using an eReader. With an eReader you must either read by an external light source, the same way you would with a paper book, or utilize one of the eReaders underlit with a 'glo' light that also doesn't impede sleep.
The article was about textbooks. Not exactly captivating devices. And they didn't make one mention of e-ink devices.
As someone who modified his TI-85 calculator to be able to store and display text for reading in high school in 1997, I think I qualify as a “digital native.” I’ve no use for dead tree books. I have a stack of paper books sitting on my desk I’ll most likely never read.
I always have my phone in my pocket, usually have my iPad on my shoulder, and can pull them out and read a few paragraphs whenever I get a few minutes. Not so with a paper book, so the only time I’d read them would be at home, and generally I’ve got other things to do then. The ability to hold libraries worth of text in my pocket far out weighs (well, no, maybe under-weighs?) any value that might be had from a physical object. I’m accustomed to the interface of an e-reader, and while it takes some adaptation and learning to be able to find things quickly (no dog eared pages on my phone), I still manage pretty well. The availability wins.
As far as the screen keeping me awake? Given the number of times I’ve smashed myself in the nose with my iPad as I nod off reading in bed, I don’t think it works like that. At least not for me.
And I vowed to never again buy a paper book that is available in electronic format in my life. There are no distractions in the kindle and I can have all the books I want at any time and, you know, not cut down a tree in the process. But really I believe it is a better experience, books are heavy and I get enough wrist strain from using my computer, I can leave markers and it is easier to use the index for text-books. Sure the amazon DRM is not very cool but the convenience makes up for it.
In my opinion they should be giving kids kindles and not ipads in schools. When I was a child I was hungry to find good books but I could never find or afford to buy them.
Luddite much? I know people with original e-ink Kindles that are still reading just fine with them. They’ve been dropped dozens of times, and still keep going. They’re not terribly fragile nor is planned obsolescence an issue for them. Certainly newer versions of the hardware have more capabilities (like video playback), but you’re hardly required to upgrade if all you want to do is keep reading text.
There aren’t any ads in Kindle or iBooks books. Dunno where you got that idea.
DRM is only an obstacle if you let it be one. I agree the effort shouldn’t be necessary, but it’s really not very much effort at all.
I personally never buy a book I don’t intend to keep forever, so resale for me to others isn’t something I consider to be an issue (though I understand others do). Being able to buy used books can be a cost savings, but I really haven’t observed that wide a difference between used book prices and Kindle prices for most stuff I’m interested in. Add in the convenience / time saved factor of being able to go online and click a few buttons rather than have to search around online or brick/mortar book stores to find what I’m looking for, then wait for it to arrive via USless Post Oriface. . . The “savings” for used are pretty much nil assuming you “pay” yourself a realistic wage for your time.
> When a digital device has to sit and spin after every single click or action, it's hard to resist the temptation to jump ship.
Fixed.
A book has better real estate than a phone. A book has absolutely, non-figuratively, zero UI lag. A book is lightweight, portable, you can drop it on concrete from 10ft and you don't need to stress over keeping track of a valuable. It's paper, it's worthless.
It's hard to resist the temptation to jump shit when GUI devs dick around with faders and sliders and icon bullshit, and endless bloat. And then it's menus within menus of navigation - we pound the life out of hotkeys and shortcuts to get around it.
BUT....it keeps me awake. I pull out the dead tree books when I need to sleep.
If you're reading alot then you should get a non-backlit ereader. Even though tablets are more expensive
and outsell dedicated ereaders, tablets are a poor substitute for a real ereader.
E-readers are very specialized devices. They are usually e-ink based and the only thing they do is display pages from a book. No web browsing, no apps.
When you start adding things like connectivity (except maybe syncing of books and annotations), web searching, or anything that isn't about reading books, you have a computer, not an e-reader.
I think there is a big difference between text that you would want to take notes along side of the text and those books that are a more casual read.
For note taking, e-readers have still not perfected the ease of having a pen and being about to write directly on on in the margins of text. Print books still excel there.
But for casual reading, a device like a kindle paper-white is better in almost all regards. Reading at night off of its adjustable lit screen is perfect for not keeping you awake if you are trying to get to sleep. 90% of people that I have suggested one to have enjoyed it.
The backlight on my eInk reader doesn't seem to keep me awake (depending on what I'm reading, of course).
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
I read quite a bit, and while I've got some interest in picking up an real e-reader some time, the fact that the pages aren't really typeset (the layout changes based on font size) and there's no physical/spatial reference for the place in the book is a big turnoff for me. I've also found that having access to too many things at once (as in, basically everything that was published before ~1930) can ultimately damp my enthusiasm for reading. Having 5 or 6 real books that I've checked out from the library or used book store is enough for me.
I do fit into the Millenial generation, and honestly it seems to me that when I compare myself to my parents or grandparents, I'm more aware of and sensitive to the negative impacts of technology. I find that it is much easier for me to focus on writing with a pen and paper, for instance. I was talking with my grandpa recently, and he was talking about how he hardly had any time in the day because it takes him so long to keep up with email throughout the day. When I told him I opened up my schedule by ditching TV, he seemed like he had never even considered such a thing. As another example, my stepdad's mom is one of the worst people I know with phone etiquette - she's on her iPhone continually playing free-to-play games, even in the midst of family gatherings. Many people I know in the millenial generation will go out of their way to remove apps on their phones that are too time consuming.
The point being, I think millenials are more attuned to the negative aspects of technology, or rather, place more emphasis on the benefits (often intangible) of older technologies and will pick from the era that suits them. Or perhaps they just reject the notion of unidirectional progress, such that newer is always better. Consider the resurgence of vinyl albums, or the surging interest in "retro" gaming, or the entire steampunk movement - all of these things are driven by millenials, and are at least somewhat anachronistic. It's an interesting trend, and I think this apparent e-reader aversion is just one more example.
Agreed. I don't know why these surveys can't differentiate between a true e-reader with an e-ink screen and other LCD/LED type devices. They are completely different experiences. E-ink devices typically don't do much else so there is no interruption from the device itself.
A couple of years ago when I flew through the US everyone had an e-reader. The last time I flew, which was late last year, everyone had paper books. I notice that the bookstores in US airports still seem to be going strong - Amazon is still selling books hand over fist.
Sure, e-readers are great for storing millions of books (that you can't lend to your friends... dang it), but they just suck.
I'm closer to 60 then 50. Most people my age would prefer paper books. No argument. I'm just not one of them. I prefer having 200+ books in my back pocket. My e-reader, ideally, let's me annotate what I'm reading.... So I have searchable relevant markers. I can look up words that need looking up. When reading on my phone on a plane I hold it with 3-4 fingers - lightly - whereas the person next to me with a big fat paper novel soon grows tired of wrangling the big, fat thing. Distraction? Don't be! Grow some self discipline.
Only boring people are ever bored.
I'm uninterested in DRM'd e-readers or any e-reader that reveals my location, refuses to let me copy, quote, print, and do other things I do with books. I'm unwilling to sacrifice my rights because some publisher wants a rent scheme on books or wants me to constantly feed them information on my whereabouts, what I'm reading, logging my name with what I read (which even my local library only does as long as the loan), and other privacy violations that simply aren't possible with books. Calling DRM "digital restrictions management" is right and proper because that frames the debate where it belongs—around user's rights.
Digital Citizen
I'm currently carting around 200 books in my Kindle.
And let's not forget that the resolution of a "Retina" display is still a joke compared to that of a printed page
1. Room in my house. I have a small house; the number of books that can fit inside is limited. We're a 6 person, homeschooling family, and my husband collects comic books. My books get the least space priority.
2. The ability to immediately start a new book when I finish a book, without having to carry around multiple books. I can also immediately check out a new book from the library without waiting for my husband to get home with the car, and then fighting the snow and sub-zero temperatures.
3. No-handed reading. With a dead-tree book, I have to hold it open. With an ereader, I can do something else with my hands, pausing only to press the "next page" button when necessary. I often use this to knit or crochet while reading.
4. The ability to switch between ebooks and audio books, or reading and using text-to-speech. I can continue the book while I have to cook, drive somewhere, etc.
5. Weight. My Kindle is much lighter than most dead tree books I read, making it much more comfortable to hold. I can read longer because my hands/wrists don't get tired.
6. Okay, I'll admit it... piracy. I buy a lot of ebooks, get ebooks from my local library and am subscribed to Kindle Unlimited, but I pirate books too. (Most often books I can't get electronic versions of legally.) Printing out a whole novel when you're paying for your own ink is not cost effective, though admittedly I did it a few times in the 90s using the free printing at the school library.