The conclusion of the great e-reader decision.

So a few weeks ago, those of you who were Facebook friends were treated to my innermost thoughts, concerns and genuine grief about a) whether I was ok with using an e-reader at all and b) if I decided to get one which way to go.

I took in numerous pieces of advice.

My friend Katie said she had a Nook and loved how it looked more like a real page. For this reason, she wouldn't get the color one. She wanted it to look as close to a real book as possible. Her husband, Scott, though, uses an iPad for reading, which, she said, she could never do.

Another friend, Carla, said she had a thing about cracking the spine of a new hardback. She only ever buys hardbacks.

Emma said I would miss the smell of a new book.

My mom never weighed in at all, but I've commiserated with her in the past about the dismal future of "real books" because of those stupid e-readers.

What changed my mind -- I was steadfastly against this for so very long -- was the price of a new release e-book. Above anything else, I tend to be very cheap. I only buy new clothes on sale. I only buy generic meds. I buy store brand of everything possible. And, as much as I love reading series, I wait to purchase new releases in my favorite series until they're no longer new releases and I can get them for fifty cents on Amazon.

This causes me great distress. I read a lot. I average anywhere from three to five books a week. So I love Half Price Books and end up reading stuff I don't always want to read because I can get it on the cheap.

I FOUND the price of new e-books because I was looking for something on the Barnes and Noble website and saw the hardback price, the paperback price AND the e-book price. On average, a new release in hardback costs $25 to $30. Maybe as low as $17.99 at Wal Mart if you get lucky. New releases at B&N, for e-books? $12.99!

This, of course, intrigued me, so I looked up e-readers. I immediately discounted most of them, as the reviews included complainst such as, "It doesn't work really well when you're trying to get on Facebook." Stupid. If it's an e-reader, what the heck is anyone doing trying to get on Facebook?

Too much bidness for reading books.

So that left me with a couple of options. I then immediately discounted anything that had a 3G carrier activation required. Not needed. There's WiFi almost anywhere, and you can read books on it without having to connect to the Internet. Also, where would I ever be that I need to read without an Internet connection? For me, nowhere. And if I am, I have the app on my phone.

This is really handy, and I tried it out on my phone before I invested in the actual e-reader. It's a free app.

Knocking that extra cost out brought me down to $250 for the Nook Color, $150 for the black and white Nook and $140 for the Kindle. Then there were some off-brand verisons I was able to find on sale for MUCH cheaper. A couple even came recommended by friends I trust.

The first one to go was the Kindle. The new release e-books were $14.99 compared to B&N's $12.99 price. So if I was going to choose one of the name brands, so to speak, it would be the Nook.

I started digging into the cheaper ones and tested a couple of them out. 

iRex e-reader

Pandigital Novel

Sony e-reader

In the end, the Nook -- black and white because of Katie's suggestion -- won me over. It looked the most like a real page.

So I bought it. I was pretty sure this was going to save me money, and time, when shopping for books. All it has done in reality is allow me to read more books. That being said, I love it. I hear there's a way to rent library books on these things, so I'm going to see if I can make that work. It may not work with the Nook, but if it works with another e-reader, I may invest in one just for that, too.

Also, I'm in the process of cleaning out all the actual books I don't want to keep. There aren't many, as I routinely take boxes to sell to HPB. So this will save us space, as well.

Of course, I'm not even going near this for my childrens' books. They will continue to read real books as long as I have a say in it. Later on in life, when they are established readers and it's become a part of their lives, they can make that decision.