Books are a waste of space

I have a Kindle. It has changed nothing about the way I read books, but it has reduced the amount of money I have spent on them (thus giving me more money to spend on more books). It has an e-paper display that so closely resembles an actual paper book that the experience is pleasurable. Even better, I have saved an incredible amount of physical space in my house, because I no longer have to find room for every single book I read.

Enumerated:

1) I can have all of (or most of) my books right in front of me, from any computer, iPhone or from my Kindle (which is always with me). I can annotate, highlight and footnote any book I read. I can have those highlighted passages at my fingertips in an instant, complete with citations and an ability to go to that location in the book at any time. I can do a full text search of all of my books, and instantly have that author’s entire library in my hand. I can also access terabytes worth of free, public domain books that would never be published again. I can instantly look up word that I don’t know, including arcane forms of english words (that one routinely find in Shakespeare, whose complete works were completely free).

2) I can save space in my house for things that actually need physical space, like furniture. Books on paper that have no value other than the words that are printed on them are a waste of space.

Really. I thought long and hard about why I have so many books. The only persistent value I see in them is that I can lend out books that I liked to people I know who would also like them. In those cases, I usually wait for a holiday or a birthday and just buy them a copy of the book that they can keep, obviating the above-stated need for them.

The books that I love very dearly are definitely worth buying and saving hard copies of, usually hardcovers and preferably the first edition. This has actual value to me as a physical object, and not just as a repository for written information. The value is not market value or as an object I can sell or save until it increases in market value.

3) I’m way over the everyday fetishism of books. I don’t reread most books. Books that I do read again are very special to me, so I buy hard copies of them. So if I have a huge collection of books that I sort of liked or liked a lot but that I won’t read again, what’s the point? I can see only one:

4) I don’t need a bookshelf to remind myself or my guests how smart and cultured I am. What is more disgusting to your sensibilities? A man who has a small collection of books that he loves, or a man who has a large collection of books that he has never read? A book collection says nothing about a person except what they want other people to think about them. I have no interest in that.

5) I don’t have to travel to a location and waste valuable resources (like gas) to buy an object (transported to its location by trucks that used valuable resources and polluted the air) that will then be transported back to my house (ibid) and then read and then one day either be incinerated or put in a landfill. The overhead of printing the book is also reduced, so the price of the book is similarly reduced. This means more money in the pockets of book publishers (who can spend money on its editors, public relations people, salesmen and marketers) and, more importantly, more money in the pockets of the people who write them.

6) Electronic distribution allows for more people to read more books written by more authors - rather than publishing books purely based on the economics of publishing (which, like all businesses, relies upon the market - books printed versus books sold). The publishing industry is also responsible for vast amounts of waste (see the remainders system in bookselling for more information).

So, why do you eschew electronic books? I would love to hear contrary opinions.