You know even in Vietnam, Kindle 3 is now becoming an interesting topic and people have been talking more about it in offices, pubs and of course online communities etc. For example, you can see more than ten people in this topic which I started two months ago who have bought one for themselves or considering to buy one. Right now a colleague of mine is digging Internet to find out what Kindle is all about and he even asked me to use my Kindle in a few hours to get real experience before making his decision – buy or not. But what is the next thing that you will think about after buying yourself a Kindle? Certainly it is about books and in most cases you should buy books directly from Amazon then you go to amazon.com and look for your favorite books but you will soonly think that there must be something wrong here because there is almost no difference in price between Kindle (ebook) and paper edition of the same book. Why?

Since these edition types are same in some aspects so as a reader you get what you wanted no matter the book type is. They have exactly same content and layout, by buying book you will have same accessibility to additional resources, and needless to say you always don’t have right to distribute its content in any form and by any mean without the authors/publisher’s permission.

Despite these similarities, there are a number of marked differences in the way you use it. But first let me make it clear so you will not be confused with the term “ebook” that I’m talking about here. Ebook edition here means an electronic format of the book that you can read on various ereaders or mobile phones. Specifically Amazon named it Kindle edition in their website because the format is made to read on their well-known Kindle. Definitely it’s not about the PDF document that you often get it freely with a paper book, and most important thing is until now PDF documents are only read well on computer screen but any ereader.

Everyone will agree that reading a paper book is most comfortable, and as Amazon said you really lose yourself in the reading, so great it is. On the other hand, the best quality of paperbook comes with hidden costs. First, you aren’t always eligible for free shipping offering so you must pay for this service. It is a significant amount of money if you are not in the US, thanks to Internet and globalization that make the world more flat than ever so it isn’t only option for us now. Second, you must wait from three days to two weeks to get your book delivered. The less money you pay for shipping service the longer it takes to reach your home. Third, you cannot bring your bookself everywhere. They are just three most significant things that don’t exist with ebook. Enough?

And what’s about ebook? At least now the content is only displayed in B/W screen, you don’t have flexibility of a paperbook such as quickly jump to a page, take a note anywhere and in any form you want it. You can’t or hardly read technical books that contain lots of complex diagrams, figures. And although it isn’t as important as aforementioned things, you should aware that not all books have an ebook edition especially non-English books, just look at your bookself to convince yourself. And ebook definitely is not for kids, or I just personally think so, I believe all kids like, and it is goof for them, colorful and nice layout, and larger font books.

Nevertheless, ebook and ereader must be created to make our life better and it has unbeatable advantages and what we most wanted from it is mobility. Now you can read any book anywhere at anytime in a reasonable screen quality, in fact it is almost like paper now. An ereader like Kindle 3 can contain two thousand books and its battery can last for a month. And don’t forget that ebook doesn’t have any hidden costs. You also save trees, then save our world by reading ebook too, is it more green .

It is clear, therefore, both ebook and paperbook edition have their own advantages, and you should not expect one costs less money than the other. The publishers don’t need any paper and ink to print a new book but you must pay for ebook’s unique benefits. Even you still don’t think ebook price is acceptable and balanced, you will be likely to buy ebook because your Kindle itself was a big investment for your reading .