I read books that are worth thousands for free
Here’s how I save a lot of time and money as a result of my burning desire to constantly read a new book
The secret: I download the online PDF version of the book I want to read onto my iPhone or iPad (see here).
I use to read on my iPhone but I got an iPad so it’s just more convenient to separate spaces (entertainment vs educational purposes).
But anyway here are reasons why switching to reading digitally may suit you:
It saves a lot of money and time
If you believe that you won’t enjoy reading on a tablet because it robs you the opportunity to physically feel the creamy white paper upon your fingertips, then same here. I, myself, use to think the exact same and was deeply confused when I see my friend cheerfully reading with their eReader device.
But I have spent over thousands of dollars on hardcopy books that I never end up reading — books that collect dust on my shelf because of how intimidating the thick spine looks.
Since most eReader devices like Kindle or Kobo require you to pay for the digital version of the book, I am also not a big fan of it because it costs money (lol). It’s also only a few tens cheaper than the hardcopy version so why not just get the hardcopy? This article suggests you only to get cost-free books on this site (PDFDrive).
During months in lockdown, at some point, I became terribly broke (because I squeezed dry my savings by shopping online too much) that I couldn’t afford to purchase another book even though I really wanted to. There were so many new blogs about well-reviewed books that I simply couldn’t help myself. It felt like my body was eating itself at the fact that I couldn’t get my hands on the copy. So I decided to find other avenues and as a result: I found digital reading and I have read more books than I’ve bought.
💡 TL;DR If you read digitally,
- You’ll save a lot of money and time — if you find you dislike the book midway, it does not financially hurt to stop reading because you won’t feel the need to squeeze the worth of your money spent on the book.
- You won’t see how thick the book is so you’ll more likely be inclined to read it because of ignorance.
It saves a lot of space too
If I bought a couple more physical books, I would virtually not have any space. My room and house is full of materialistic things that there is no more room.
Altruistically, if you care about the environment, I guess you could say buying less books is more eco-friendly.
At the same time, downloading 500 or more pages in a book also actually does not take a lot of storage on your device (my iPad/ iPhone in my case).
So definitely a win on that front!
No need to wait for shipping
I use to buy my hardcopy books online and by the time it arrives, about 2 to 3 weeks later, my excitement for the book has fainted (blaming the law of diminishing returns). So I always end up not reading the book and leaving it to stray.
If you found a good book that you burningly want to read, no need to wait for it to arrive, albeit through global shipping or simply travelling to the nearest bookstore, the free digital copy is a few clicks away from you.
Capitalise on this rush of excitement.
Good for note-taking and writing blogs
Since I’ve been intending to write more frequently on MEDIUM, I was thinking on publishing insights from books I recently read but before my iPad, I would use a pencil to underline intuitive quotes from the book and spend hours typing down the quotes from the physical book. This was time-consuming and inconvenient but with the highlight function of my iPad it keeps track of all of my highlights so I can easily copy and paste it! Easier to navigate through quotes as well.
A few disadvantages
There are a few PDF versions that have not yet been uploaded to the site. These are most likely books that are niche or restrictively published. However, I have only encountered this problem a few times only.
Here is my current library:
The reason to read digitally instead is foolproof and the transition would definitely have been hard for me if I wasn’t broke but now I can’t go back.
