I also take umberidge with the idea that digital books are more convenient. A physical book is more engaging, more beautiful, more real and more present than a digital book. All things that I find convenient when I want to interact with knowledge and art. Horses for courses I assume.
Glenn Horowitz built a fortune selling the archives of writers such as Vladimir Nabokov and Alice Walker.
Different collectors buy different things- some like books owned by specific people, others want works (drafts, letter, editions, etc) of an author.
Pristine is for some, a book that's been lived in is worth more to others who look for margin notes.
They’re damn bulky, though, especially when there’s an alternative that weighs nothing. Damn bulky.
I'm still not sure if my children for example, understands that when I'm staring at an iPad I'm almost always reading a book. Does a vast library in iBooks translate to them as well as the same library on physical books in a bookshelf in the house? My sense is it does not.
And when I'm gone, will anyone find any interest in my iBook library? In its highlights and notes? In the books I've read and re-read dozens of times?
Some of my fondest memories are going over my older or deceased family members' book shelves. I have never, however, gone over anyone's tablet. Part of that is because it's newer, but something about the browse-ability of an e-book misses the mark. I can't see which book is worn from being read and re-read, or brimming with notes and scribbles. In digital, it's hard to tell which books that person found significant, but in physical it's obvious by the condition (or even number of copies) of the book.
It's amusing to read that, for on one side of my family, scribbling in a book would be considered a most heinous crime! I keep any writing to the flyleaf if the book is a gift, but don't otherwise write in them. Another thing that complicates the matter in my family is that we have always been serial second-hand book buyers, and in such a case a book's physical condition is not necessarily an indication of how much it was loved by its immediate previous owner. On the other hand, my grandmother tended to insert relevant newspaper cuttings into the book for the benefit of future readers!
The thing is, I've had a number of instances where the paper copy of a book was so poorly typeset (usually overly long lines on too-wide pages, e.g., _The Inklings and King Arthur: J. R. R. Tolkien, Charles Williams, C. S. Lewis, and Owen Barfield on the Matter of Britain_ edited by Sørina Higgins) that I actually purchased the e-book version so as to be able to read it comfortably.
Your grandmother's idea sounds wonderful, though.
Otherwise, very much in agreement!
Of course, this has the advantage of keeping prices down for those of us looking for those other editions and conditions, but it can at times be rather perplexing. I was once in an auction where it was evident that the auctioneer was also surprised by a case of this: in an auction with a first edition by an American trade press, and a first UK edition from a year later by a particularly notable private press, with a smaller print run, typeset and printed by hand by notable historical figures and friends of the author, and an estimate of around four times the first trade edition... the UK edition sold within estimate, and while the first edition sold for significantly more than the UK edition, vastly over its estimate.
In another case, I had a bit of trouble finding sellers online who even noted the edition of a particular 19th century book in its description if it was not a first edition, despite the second edition being at the center of a significant historical legal drama, being nominally banned and ordered destroyed, and making a mess of British blasphemy law in a case where no one, including both the government and the prosecution, wanted the publisher to be found guilty.
My guess is that many book collectors will set a particular goal, for example, collecting first editions or author-signed copies of a particular genre, set of authors, etc, and will follow that goal, rather than acquiring individual books for individual reasons.
More generally, collecting communities often seem to fall into purely seeking rarity, placing the highest demand on the items with the least supply regardless of why the supply is small. Thus at an extreme in book collecting, for example, you have collectors who see entirely uncut pages as being preferable, despite it making the book unreadable. I have a friend who is fond of antique pens who expressed disappointment that in seeking the rarest pens, the community often ended up placing the highest value on the worst: the pens with bad designs that didn't work well, the variants and colors that were particularly ugly, all the models that sold very poorly and were quickly discontinued, and are thus rarer.
Probably not, but nor will anyone else find interest in your physical library. One's collections are invaluable to oneself, but usually uninteresting to anyone else.
I donated hundreds of books when I cleaned out my parents' house. Most probably ended up in a dump or recycled.
You can't lose your place easily. Lighting isn't an issue if you buy a backlit model. Reading lying on your back or side is much easier. Traveling is easier with an e-reader. Access to wikipedia and the dictionary on the same device.
There are emotional reasons that I like paper books, but if I'm just trying to read, give me an ebook.
If the medium makes the difference between me reading a text rather than not reading that text, I tend to think that makes it functionally "better".