I hated the idea of Ereaders. A book is a book and should be paper and kept in a store. I want something concrete that I can put on the shelf and throw when I get angry.
Two things happened to open me to the idea of ebooks. First thing was I had the opportunity to spend the fall in London with my sister while I was working on my M.F.A in creative writing. I had a long reading list I had to get through and I couldn’t afford to buy the books in America then then carry them with me to London, and vice versa I couldn’t buy them there and afford to ship them back. Also during my time there I wouldn’t have a phone, so I invested in a Kindle Fire to use as my communication device on the go and keep the books needed to complete my reading list. (It doesn’t have 3g but you can almost always find wifi in a city) The second thing was because I was leaving for a few months I terminated my lease and had to move. Books are heavy and since my conversion to ebooks I haven’t even unpacked the boxes of books. So, this was how the original Kindle Fire found its way into my life.
Sadly, less than a year into its life my Kindle stopped working. Don’t worry though; I got the protection plan, because I assumed I would do something stupid to it within a year. Took it back to the store and walked out with a brand new Kindle Fire HD. As sad as I was to see my travel companion go into the scrap bin, the HD is amazing.
We all know you can read books on a Kindle, so I will skip that in my lists of why this device is awesome. However, it has an HD screen for a better picture than my TV has, and comes with an HDMI output slot, so I have been streaming my Amazon Prime selections onto the TV. I can even upload power points and other documents to the Kindle and display them on the full size screen, which will be nice for upcoming presentations. It has a built in camera and comes loaded with a version of Skype that is made for Droid platforms and is Amazon and Google’s answer to Facetime. I know many people are in the Apple camp, but with these new improvements I am now totally sold on Droid. I was already using Google Drive and Cloud, which if you aren’t using you should be, but I can access any document, music, or video I have saved on my computer through my Droid or Kindle. By being able to directly link my Kindle to anything with a HDMI input I now have the power of AppleTV, but on a device I already own. It is Bluetooth compatible and I purchased a keyboard for it, which works wonderfully when I want to write while traveling.
And yes, many of you are going to say I will never leave the Apple camp, and I understand, they make a great product. No longer though, is it the only option for a fully synced simplified device system, not to mention my Kindle only cost $200.
Back to the point at hand, if you are like me you always feel like you don’t have enough room in your house, check your book shelves and see how much space you could gain by eliminating your library. I understand, it looks prestigious as all hell to have an entire wall filled with books, and I get wanting to collect signed copies from your favorite authors and first editions. I understand all of that, but you can save a ton of space by removing your library.
One of my greatest reservations to ereaders was I didn’t want to rebuy my library. There are a ton of companies now that you can send your books to and they will create an ereader file for you and it is far less than the cost of rebuying a book. Keep your first editions and signed copies proudly displayed, but convert the novels you may read again. For those of you who are worried that if your Kindle is broken or stolen you’ll lose all of your novels, they are backed up by Amazon, and your next device will have full access to your entire library.
We download music, video games, movies, and TV shows without thinking twice about it, books are going to be the next to follow this trend. I recommend checking out the Kindle Fire HD to see if it is for you.
Justin Kassab 
When we moved two years ago the greatest obstacle was our library. We had over 3,000 books! There was not a wall in the house that was not covered in books. We gave away 90% of them, sold them, donated, etc… and now I use my tablet. What a huge weight to unload.
Call me old school but once your batteries go flat, die (as they seem to do for a lot of people after a few years), someone steps on it, steals it, a hot drink gets tipped all over it, the dog attacks it, or knocks it onto the floor.
I’ll still be able to read a book.
Any of those things happen and I go spend 15 minutes at Best Buy and get a new one with my insurance policy. Also I can’t stream movies and TV through a dead tree book, nor can I upload my work as an editor. It gives me the ability to travel with a library of books, a full compilation of movies, more tv than I ever care to watch, hundreds of pounds worth of manuscripts, access to all the files on my computer, email, so on and so forth. All of those things are now in a 7 inch rectangle for me. I’ll never deny someone a book. I used to prefer them, but I can’t argue with how much easier the kindle fire makes my life.
Also, if someone steals your book, a hot drink gets spilled on it, the dog eats it, or any of those other things your book is just a destroyed, but likely without the insurance policy.