Back in high school/early college, i was reading daily for ~4 hours at a rate of 60-100 pages per hour. Which means a novel every 2-5 days.
Assuming it takes 5 days to finish a book, that means ~6 books per month. Or ~72 books per year. If every one of them cost $10, then you’re looking at around $700 worth of books per year for a teen.
You might be asking: then why not borrow from a library? Well, a) I lived in a country where literature was heavily censored, b) I mostly read in English, which was not available in said library, c) after reading a stupid amount of books per year, you start to realize most books published by the US big 5 fall into specific categories, and to find something not in those you need to look into indie publishing. These days, most people self publish through ebooks on Amazon (and are locked into exclusively deals because of Kindle unlimited, so no physical copies). At a certain point, an ereader is more economical and environmentally friendly than paperbacks. (I used a phone back in those days, I would have killed for an ereader).
As for why I had an old kindle device registered to my Amazon account, I don’t actually read on it (it has never been turned on since 2019). It is solely used as a dedrm device. Until last year, older kindles can be used to remove drm from purchased ebooks by simply downloading the ebook from Amazon’s website and running a script with the Kindle’s serial number. I believe supporting indie authors (that are sometimes chained to Amazon) is more important than hurting Amazon. So once I could afford it, I started purchasing all the indie books I read, downloading them, and ripping the drum for archival purposes. I would read my books on another Kobo e-reader.
As for e-readers I’ve used: I like things with physical buttons, big bw e-ink screens, and epub support (I have scripts to reformat epub books to my liking). The best e-reader I’ve had was the Kobo Forma, which I gave a friend after I acquired the Kobo Sage (which was a huge disappointment and piece of crap). These days, everything is shifting to shitty color e-ink screens, so I recently bought a refurbished Kobo Libra 2 (smaller screen, but still paperback sized and has no phantom button issues like the sage). I plan to de-solder and replace the battery and use it for another 10 years or so, until color e-ink gets better or they give up on it.
Back in high school/early college, i was reading daily for ~4 hours at a rate of 60-100 pages per hour. Which means a novel every 2-5 days.
Assuming it takes 5 days to finish a book, that means ~6 books per month. Or ~72 books per year. If every one of them cost $10, then you’re looking at around $700 worth of books per year for a teen.
You might be asking: then why not borrow from a library? Well, a) I lived in a country where literature was heavily censored, b) I mostly read in English, which was not available in said library, c) after reading a stupid amount of books per year, you start to realize most books published by the US big 5 fall into specific categories, and to find something not in those you need to look into indie publishing. These days, most people self publish through ebooks on Amazon (and are locked into exclusively deals because of Kindle unlimited, so no physical copies). At a certain point, an ereader is more economical and environmentally friendly than paperbacks. (I used a phone back in those days, I would have killed for an ereader).
As for why I had an old kindle device registered to my Amazon account, I don’t actually read on it (it has never been turned on since 2019). It is solely used as a dedrm device. Until last year, older kindles can be used to remove drm from purchased ebooks by simply downloading the ebook from Amazon’s website and running a script with the Kindle’s serial number. I believe supporting indie authors (that are sometimes chained to Amazon) is more important than hurting Amazon. So once I could afford it, I started purchasing all the indie books I read, downloading them, and ripping the drum for archival purposes. I would read my books on another Kobo e-reader.
As for e-readers I’ve used: I like things with physical buttons, big bw e-ink screens, and epub support (I have scripts to reformat epub books to my liking). The best e-reader I’ve had was the Kobo Forma, which I gave a friend after I acquired the Kobo Sage (which was a huge disappointment and piece of crap). These days, everything is shifting to shitty color e-ink screens, so I recently bought a refurbished Kobo Libra 2 (smaller screen, but still paperback sized and has no phantom button issues like the sage). I plan to de-solder and replace the battery and use it for another 10 years or so, until color e-ink gets better or they give up on it.
If anyone wants some examples of good, indie books that stuck with me over the years:
You can also find these in the other “usual” places.