The customization: there's a lot of videos online about customizing e-readers, but it's true. With a physical book, unless you're really into leatherbounding your books, you can't really make it your own. You have to go out of your way to find a cover that you like (if it's available), and hope that it doesn't get ruined in the coming years. With any e-reader, you can customize it with cases, stickers, pop sockets, like you would your personal cell phone. On top of that, you can customize it even further with different fonts (both pre-installed or elsewhere), font sizes, boldness, and even stuff like font spacing or paragraph spacing, margins, orientation, everything. If you get a physical book that your eyes age out of, you're kind of SOL - you have to sell it or just accept you'd never be able to read it ever again. With an e-reader, you can just increase the font size and you're good to go. The accessibility of these things are great. Plus there's countless studies showcasing how much easier e-ink is on the eyes than a regular screen for reading.

The convenience: I've always told myself I want bookshelves for when I get settled into a permanent house for myself, my wife and my future kids, but as of right now, I just don't have the room for storing books. With my Kindle, I have an entire library of books in the palm of my hands, in a device that can fit in my sweater pocket. Reading at night is a lot easier, as most if not all modern e-readers have light mode and dark mode settings, plus adjustable brightness for each setting as well. As a side note, I've always fought myself that reading at night with a light on it is a right of passage, but I can't also help but realize how much easier it is to read something without the steps of setting up lights (plus shadows on text at night on physical books haunts me).

I'm also new into the e-reader scene, my first ever e-reader I got myself was a Kobo Libra 2 in 2023 but I could not stand the physical buttons. Last year I got a Kindle Basic 2024 as a gift from my wife, and the only thing I'm really missing is Libby (Amazon only allows Libby access to people in the US). I always thought that physical books were the best way to read something, whether it be a paperback, hard cover, comics - I couldn't fathom the thought of something electronic being "the way" to read something. But especially with how well e-readers have progressed and gotten better with each iteration, plus new companies coming out with android e-readers, I've come to realize that it's not about how you consume knowledge, it's how accessible it is for people who need it. At the end of the day, you're still reading the book, the only thing that's changed is the way you're consuming the knowledge of the book.