In this article let’s take a look at whether buying books is worth it or waste of money by looking at all the benefits and drawbacks of buying books in detail and I will also let you know whether you should buy a book or lend it from a library or you should go the other way around by reading the books online through PDF or consider audio books.
This is the most comprehensive article you can find online on this topic so I would recommend you to bookmark the article and also share the article with your friends to let them know benefits and drawbacks of purchasing books and I would also like to mention it here quickly that I am an avid reader & a big fan of reading and listening books online.
But all the points I mentioned in this article are unbiased and will help you get a good picture on what you should do now so without further ado let’s dive right in.
Why buying books is worth it? Benefits of buying books
Great for knowledge & self growth
One of the main advantages of buying books is that it is great source of knowledge and also provides a lot of self growth for people who read books.
In my experience, the first book I have read was the power of subconscious mind which was written by Joseph murphy and what’s amazing about this book was it revealed some interesting information about subconscious mind and how it affects our daily life and
how you can use your subconscious mind to achieve our goals and dreams using different techniques and this was one of the best books I have read later on,
i have continued to read books like how to win friends and influence people written by Dale Carnegie which is also a remarkable book to improve your relationships with others and communication skills and I have read many personal finance books like think and grow rich and rich dad poor dad.
What’s really amazing about reading books is that you will get to know all the experiential lessons and knowledge of authors decades of experience in less than 300 pages book so you not only get a lot of knowledge but
You can also learn important lessons about author life in books and this is why reading books is one of the best activities you can do for self-growth there are many top people like Bill gates Elon Musk and Mukesh Ambani who regularly read books and also recommend others to read them.
Better than eBooks
Another advantage of buying physical books is it is definitely much better as compared to purchasing ebooks.
Physical books are much better compared to ebooks because you can smell and feel the book and touch it physically which is a much better experience for the reader as compared to reading the books through the screen of the device which is not so interesting (but honestly speaking this is not big deal to worry about) and
reading ebooks can create a lot of eye strain and headache because you will be staring at screen for a long period but you can have no headache and eye strain by reading paper book.
And unlike ebooks you can read physical books for as many hours as you want because in ebooks you will read them on any device and every device like mobile phone has a battery which will die after a couple of hours which is not a case with reading physical books.
A good exercise & habit
Another advantage of purchasing and reading books is it is a great exercise for your brain and eyes.
And reading books can drastically improve your concentration, increase your empathy, vocabulary, reduces stress and it also promotes better sleep and health for people so
reading is not just about gaining knowledge and feeding new information into your brain but it is also about improving your mental health by introducing new thoughts and feeding good information and also a good exercise for your brain.
You Do not have to worry about time
Another advantage of purchasing books is you do not have to worry about time which is usually the case if you borrow the books from someone like a library or a friend.
It is important because not all the books are same and written equally because there are books which will be difficult to read and understand and there will be books which can be completed in less than a couple of days so
if you purchase a book you will be complete owner of the book and you can read whenever You want but if you borrow the book from someone then you always keep in mind that you have to return that book so you may not read book properly skip some pages and paragraphs while reading.
These are all the advantages of buying books now let’s take a look at the disadvantages.
Why buying books is waste of money? Drawbacks of buying books
Storage issues
One of the main disadvantages of buying books is of the storage issue because many books are good sized and they require a lot of space on your desk so as you continue to purchase new books you will need to find space where you can store them and after a certain period of time storage
can be a big problem for you more than money, but of course you can resell that book as a second hand version for cheaper price to someone but still it is an issue to deal with for many readers because many readers get emotionally connected by purchasing and reading books so they don’t want to sell it to someone.
It can become useless after a while
It is very important to know that even though books are very helpful for your life but not all the books are written equally and also become helpful because there are many shitty books out there as much as good books.
Hence there are many people without looking at the reviews and comments of the book purchase them and regret of purchasing later as it can become useless since it is not what they were looking for and the quality of book will also be bad.
And there are many people who wanted to buy and actually buy books to read them but due to their busy lifestyle, laziness, they just procrastinate and abondon reading them since reading requires alot of effort.
This is why I would highly recommend you to first look at the reviews and ratings and also try to look at the content and author credibility before purchasing the book so that you won’t regret of buying the book later and
I have also seen most people who read books don’t read a book more than two or three times so even if they buy books like hard cover books which are very expensive compared to the paperback, people won’t read the book more than twice or thrice so the books will be stored in the shelf for years without getting touched by anyone and remaining useless in the dust.
Books can be expensive
Another disadvantage of buying books is of course the money factor.
Price does not come in your mind when you first start purchasing books but because most people tend to read books within a couple of weeks so when you start purchasing books like 5 or 6 on a regular basis in 2 or 3 month period, this is where money factor comes into picture and a new expense can get added to your monthly expenditure and budget which can hurt your savings.
Bad for environment
Another disadvantage of purchasing books is of the environment factor.
It is a basic fact that pages and papers in the books are prepared using wood pulp and chemicals and you get wood by cutting trees in forest.
In fact, one tone of magazine paper uses over 15 trees. In the last 40 years, paper usage has grown 400%.
And We all know how important trees are for our environment and survival because trees will release oxygen by consuming carbon dioxide from the air and they also help in reducing soil erosion, reducing pollution and improving groundwater recharge, balancing the food chain by providing food for many animals, shelter for birds, reducing floods and providing food, and many more reasons.
So the ecological factor is also important to consider when you want to purchase a book and These are all the reasons why purchasing a book can be a waste of money As compared to the benefits.
Is it better to buy a book or get it from the library?
After reading all the benefits and drawbacks of buying books, in my opinion buying book is waste of money and not worth it because you cannot buy all the books and buying books is also quite expensive nowadays, buying physical books also requires a lot of space to store, hence
I would recommend you to either borrow the book from someone like library or friend instead of purchasing a book because even if you purchase a book it is very unlikely that you will read it more than a couple of times or at least for me, I did not open the book which I have already read more than a couple of times, I will always look for new books to read and new knowledge to gain.
Of course there are some issues with getting books from library or from friend like you will always have to return that book and you will have issues of time,
You also have to look after the condition of the book and pages but you can sort it out by having a conversation with them or paying some extra fees but by paying a small amount of fees you can get access to many books and you do not have to worry about storage issues from library and if you don’t have library access at your city then you can consider ebooks.
This is what I prefer the most and let me give you reasons why you should switch to eBooks’ over paperback or borrowing the book.
Why I prefer eBooks over paperbacks?
- Affordable-You can get subscription of Kindle for around 200 rupees per month and get access to millions of books across different genres authors and languages at your fingertips and you can either download them offline or read them online anywhere anytime and you can carry them on your phone without worrying about portability and storage because most of these files are very small in size like a few megabytes if you download them and you do not have to worry about condition of the book because they are digital materials
- Easily find, bookmark, create notes, highlight & share content-another benefit is you can easily find bookmark and also highlight important content whenever you are reading ebook on Kindle and you can also share the content with your friends on WhatsApp easily
- Not so bad for eyes or device-another benefit of ebooks is It is also not very bad for your eyes as it was earlier, You can get features like dark mode, increase the font size of book, get read aloud feature, reduce the brightness of the screen, and many more features to reduce eye strain and improve battery of your device
- You can also listen them like podcasts through audiobooks-You can also listen to the books through reading aloud feature or through audio books on audible and Spotify if you don’t like to read them and listening to books is better compared to reading because you can listen to books anywhere anytime and you do not need much energy and concentration for listening as compared to reading the book
- Eco-friendly-Ebooks and audiobooks are also very eco friendly because they do not cause any damage to the environment & trees
- No worries of space-another thing about ebooks is you can easily download and store them on your mobile and they are also small in size which is great because you do not have to worry about physical space occupancy with ebooks which saves a lot of space on your desk
- Easily printable-another thing about ebooks is you can easily print and make physical paper copy of any page you find interesting instead of whole book while reading any ebook so that you can keep it with yourself for a long time
With that said let’s end the article.
Conclusion
These are all the things you need to know about buying books.
Do comment down what are your thoughts about buying books in the comment section below and also share the article with your friends and subscribe to my blog to receive notifications regarding whenever I publish a new post in future.