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Why I’ve Fallen Back in Love with My Kindle

When eReaders first came out, I was in the die-hard camp of paper over e-ink. I never thought I’d own an eReader, let alone really love it.

Frankly, I think I was blinded by the price tag. Almost $200 for the machine and $10 per book. A paperback was only $12 so why spend an extra two hundred bucks.

In the perfect storm of God’s plan coming together, my then-boyfriend started to encourage me to write “Kindle Shorts” and publish them on Amazon. I never did figure out exactly what a “Kindle Short” was, let alone how to get them into the marketplace, but a seed was planted.

For years, I’d been writing “eBooks” and “publishing” them through my website. It was a convoluted effort of making .pdf files and navigating off-brand e-commerce software and then tricking it into playing nice with the free version of PayPal. Sales were, if I was lucky, one per month.

So I was naturally and understandably skeptical of ebooks on Amazon.

Visiting that same then-boyfriend at his family’s home in Lubbock, we had the opportunity to have lunch with my aunt, who lived in the same city. My aunt surprised me with a choice: did I want a Kindle right-now-in-my-hand or she could order me a Nook.

I took the Kindle.

Books were still $10, but if the machine was free, I’d be willing to try it out. I quickly realized that Amazon had THOUSANDS of classics for free. After plowing my way through my favorites, “Wizard of Oz,” “The Secret Garden,” “Robinson Crusoe,” I realized there was something to this whole eBook thing. No matter how many books I loaded or how many words the book had, the Kindle was always the same.

I was limited by the battery life and my budget.

I also realized that I’d made a grave assumption that all eBooks were $10. While, yes, plenty ARE that expensive, many were not.

When the first-generation Kindle Fire came out, I was waiting in line at Best Buy on release day.

The novelty for me, however, quickly wore off. It became “too much work” to keep the Fire charged. (The original Kindle from my Aunt had long-since been collecting dust on the bookcase.)

It was too hard to “shop” for a book, either on the computer and navigate the transfer to the Fire, or from the Fire itself. Both, I decided, were too hard to figure out how to get the Kindle onto my wi-fi.

Then, almost two years ago, I realized the biggest difference that had be falling back in love with my Kindle.

You.Can.Read.It.In.The.Dark.

Why I love my Kindle: you can read in the dark! #KindleFire Click To TweetIn 2017, when I became a mom, I realized the inconvenient truth of nursing moms everywhere:

You spend an EXTREME amount of time sitting, rocking, nursing.

And TV gets old fast. Not to mention the first time the TV gets loud and with a sudden noise that either wakes the baby, or worse, causes the baby to CHOMP down in an agonizing bite.

And yes, while my phone also is available for in-the-dark reading, as Small Thing gets older, he wants to watch all the pretty pictures scroll by on Facebook. My Kindle, however, is page-after-page of black text. He loses interest quickly.

I’ve also discovered Kindle Unlimited. (Seriously, check this out!) For $10 a month, I have access to so many books. While I still buy plenty of Kindle editions, I love that I have a huge library at my fingers.

And I can read in the dark. Whether that’s endlessly nursing a teething, grumpy, sniffling baby, or even curled in my own bed, lights off so I’m not waking my husband OR the kid.

To any author who is debating about releasing both a paperback and a Kindle version – do both. Reading in the dark is a life-changer.

And to my beloved, first-generation Kindle Fire.

Thank you for being there for me. And your battery lasts a lot longer than I ever gave you credit for!

Kim Galloway
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