I bought an ereader late last year and it has completely changed my reading habits. (A Kobo Aura H2O.)
Sure. Paper books smell great, and I still read them.
However, reading on eInk enables a totally different experience. A better experience? Not on all fronts. Because, let’s be honest: ereaders are horrible, dumb, ugly things. The screen looks like expensively laminated cheap cardboard. The build quality sucks: ereaders feel flimsy as hell. The wifi sucks. eInk refresh rates suck. The software sucks. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that I hate my Kobo as a device – except for the fact that it makes reading so darn easy!
First of all, it’s way easier to get a new ebook than it is a paper book. An ebook is ready to be read right after paying. Paper books have to ship to your house.
On top of that, most ereaders enable you to read web articles, through integration with apps like Pocket, or emailing them to an email address. Suddenly my Pocket integration in Feedly has become much more valuable. I’m intently scanning headers in Feedly now, building an ever-growing list of essays, recipe ideas, profiles, reviews, etc. And after a tip from the POM podcast, I’ve started using Mailbrew as a Nuzzle replacement, to source articles from my Twitter feed. I can’t even read all the stuf I’m saving!