Welcome back to Book Break! In this video I'm going to give you a crash course in how to use
an e-reader like a pro. So the e-reader versus physical book debate is a tale as old as time,
or at least a tale as old as e-books, so I'm not going to try and solve that in this video.
After all there is no answer, there are so many amazing pros of each, so they're both fantastic.
But in this video I'm gonna give you some really good tips for how to use your e-reader like a pro.
If you're already a digital native these might be some really useful tricks that you're missing,
and if you are a staunch traditionalist who thinks that even the word e-book is blasphemy,
well this video might just change your mind. So the first tip, really important, will change your
life, is watch out for the amazing deals that you can get on e-books. That's one of the things
that's so fantastic about e-books, they do tend to be cheaper. So if you're a big reader, if you
read a lot of books, this will save you a lot of money. Sign up for BookBub, that way you will get
emails telling you all about the greatest deals of that day. You can also follow publishers on social
media, on Twitter, they might give you alerts. If you follow us @panmacmillan on Twitter we do
let you know when there are some really good deals that we think you'll love. You can get brand new
books for as little as 99p, I mean that is a game changer. There are also loads of subscription
services where you can get each book that you read for free, like for example Kindle unlimited,
Scripd. Depending on what e-reader you have, different services will be compatible with
different devices. I've found that they're all at least compatible on my phone, because of course
reading digitally might mean reading with an e-reader, it might mean reading on an app on
your phone, on your tablet, even reading on your desktop on your computer. So many ways to sneak
in a bit of reading when people think you're doing something else. My next really really good tip is
did you know that you can use your e-reader with your local library? So if you use the app Libby
or the app Overdrive you can register with your local library and borrow e-books and audiobooks
from there. Amazing. Again it might vary which devices these books that your library lend you
are compatible with, but they have always always worked for me reading on my phone. Which brings
me to my next tip - because if just the thought of reading on your phone gives you a headache, I
can help with that. You can, and should, customize your reading experience. So so many e-readers and
e-reading apps on your phone now have the ability for you to choose your font, your text size,
your background colour, you never need to get eye strain ever again. If you're an audiobook fan,
one of the coolest things about reading digitally is that you can have an e-book and audiobook on
the go at the same time, and it will sync and track your place in both of them. So for example
if you're reading your e-book on the train, and then you get off the train and walk down the road
listening to the audiobook, it will automatically move you to the right place. And then you can get
home and do what I love to do which is read on your e-book and listen to the audio at the same
time. You can actually save the audiobook on your e-reader. My next tip is obvious, but get yourself
a really nice case for your e-reader. You can get a really lovely simple one like this, or you can
get much more fancy, beautiful ones. You can actually get cases that disguise your e-reader
as a traditional book so no one needs to know that you went over to the dark side.
You can get those lovely fabric cases that you can put an e-reader in, and you can also put a
physical book in depending what you're reading that day. A tip for when you're reading very
long books: I like to read really long books on my e-reader for two reasons. Firstly, long books
tend to be pretty heavy, whereas this stays the same weight no matter what you're reading on it,
and also you can turn off the percentage counter or page counter at the bottom of your screen,
so you don't actually know how far through the book you are. I find that really helps because
it can be just psychologically quite daunting when you can see exactly how many pages you still have
left to go. On the flip side it can feel sad when you can see too obviously you're coming to the end
of a book. Whereas turning that off allows you to just fully be in the moment to be enjoying your
book, on the very page that you're on. If you are a fan of beautifully organized bookshelves,
as I am, all of my shelves are alphabetical, did you know that beautifully organized bookshelves
are not just for physical books? On your e-reader you can sort your books into custom collections,
so you can arrange them by genre, by theme, whatever you feel like. You can also automatically
group series together, and I’ve found that has tidied everything up a lot. If you live with
other people who are also big readers, you can set up a family library on most e-reader platforms,
so you can share books just like you would in your household. With a physical book you can also lend
e-books which is really clever, so you can lend a digital book to a friend who can then read it on
their e-reader, or on their computer or phone or wherever. And while they've got it you won't be
able to access it on your device, just like in real life. And finally, my final tip for using
your e-reader like a pro goes without saying: read the samples. One of the greatest things
about reading digitally is that you can download the first chapter of as many books as you would
like and really get a feel for whether you're interested in reading that book, without spending
anything. It's such a perfect way to capture that feeling of spending hours in a bookshop
flicking through the pages of books you're choosing between, but without the awkwardness that
you might feel if you think you've been lingering there for too long. So those are my top tips for
using an e-reader like a pro. I would love to know yours, so do leave a comment below letting me know
your best tips and tricks for reading digitally. I will also link here to a video we made on tips for
getting into audiobooks, another format of reading that I've just been falling in love with lately,
so do click through and have a watch of that, and I'll see you next time!