Ebook Use Case Found
Published at 09:32 on 6 July 2026
Almost exactly a year ago, I wrote: “Unless … I encounter a use case that justifies my investment in an ebook reader with a sure-thing, short payback period, ebooks just don’t seem to make much sense to me.”
Well, use case found: technical floras. I have found ones for both British Columbia (where I live) and New Mexico (where I visit periodically) downloadable for free online. These are real static files, with all the rights of ownership. Of course, being available for free, I can’t expect to sell them for money, but who cares. The main thing is that someone can’t set a record in a database somewhere and make my books vanish from my reader.
The print version of even a single such flora costs over twice what basic ebook reader costs, so such a device pays for itself basically immediately. Sure, there’s a good chance the reader will be dead in about a decade, making me replace it, but even then, the cost disparity makes buying two readers justifiable. By then, we’re getting to around twenty years, by which time a) it’s likely I won’t be going on long hikes anymore due to my advanced age, and b) the floras I have will be obsolete anyhow, due to nomenclature changes.
A further bonus is weight and bulk: an ebook reader is lighter than even a condensed, single-volume version of a technical flora, and the two above are only available in their full-size, multivolume versions. That’s really important for something I want to take along on hikes.