As the publishing industry moves online, you may have ordered books on your computer or gone on your local library’s website to request books or an inter-library loan. But would you ever consider reading a book on a computer or subscribing to your favorite magazine’s electronic edition?

Each year, a greater portion of the books sold are being delivered electronically. More and more people are reading books, newspapers and magazines on their computers. And special purpose computers have also enjoyed great success — Amazon Kindles, Apple iPad’s, Sony Readers — and legions more will soon will be reading on Google’s forthcoming electronic readers. Not everyone is excited about this revolution, and you may be among them. Just as some people insist that a marriage can only be between one man and one woman, some readers insist that a book can only be made from paper and glue. But getting the soft copy of a book rather than a hard copy does have some advantages. It’s cheaper, for one thing, and fewer trees are involved. Also, you can’t lose it — it will always belong to you and be available to you. It will never yellow or get dog-eared. You can also search it more easily to quickly find that favorite passage you want to re-read.

 There are ways that an electronic book offers less than a traditional book. For example, you can’t loan it to a friend to read or get the author to sign it. And so far, there’s no way to sell your used copy to someone else. And, of course, you can’t use it to press wildflowers. But electronic editions afford you almost instant access, anytime you want it.

If you already own a Kindle or Sony eReader, you’ve already made the switch. If you haven’t, this article may help ease your transition to the world of electronic publishing. Many people find it unappealing to read anything of length on their computer screen. I believe it’s mostly because they haven’t learned to make the kind of adjustments that allow reading on the screen to be pleasurable.

Just as in traditional formats, the requirements for reading short pieces of writing and reading long material are different. You may read a price increase notice from the gas company standing at your kitchen counter, but you wouldn’t read a novel standing there. If you’re a reader, you probably have created one or two special places in your home for reading at length. You didn’t just plunk down a chair and say, “OK, this is my special reading spot.” You considered it carefully; you thought about the lighting and the positioning of the reading space within your home, about privacy and sound considerations — you might have even purchased a special piece of furniture to sit in to make your reading spot perfect for you.

Similarly, when you use your computer for long reading sessions, the requirements are also different than typing out a quick email. In this article, I am going to tell you how to set up your computer to read at length easily and comfortably.

The biggest problems with computer reading are eye-strain and body discomfort. You can read comfortably on the screen if you make the preparations to avoid strain and discomfort. Basically, the idea is to make the text size large enough so that you can sit back farther from the screen than you normally do and to adjust the page width so that you can read the text comfortably without moving your head side to side. Last, we want to make sure that the task of scrolling down the screen is easily accomplished without a lot of moving around.

For me, the right nose to screen distance for normal computer tasks is about 18 inches. When I read something long, I push my chair back a foot further, so that I’m about two and a half feet from the screen. Give that a try now — push your laptop or monitor a bit further back or move your chair back. Oh, and it wouldn’t hurt to take a moment to get your glasses nice and clean.

If you’re using a laptop, go find a comfortable chair or sofa to use, maybe even the same chair that you use to read traditional tree-killing books. If your laptop is too hot to rest comfortably in your lap or on your legs comfortably, find something for it to perch on that you feel comfortable having on your lap – perhaps a place mat or a towel or a road atlas. There are also special purpose laptop holders that you can buy if you like. Some of them create a desk on your lap that will hold your laptop. But for now a thick place mat will probably suffice.

Next, whether on laptop or desk top, find the document or website that you’d planning to read and pull it up on the screen. Or if you’re currently reading this article on your computer, use this article for the exercise.

Because you’re further away, you’ll probably need to make the type appear larger in order to read the article with the least amount of eyestrain. In Microsoft Word and many other programs, you’ll find a View menu, and in that View menu, you’ll often find a way to zoom in and out of the document. If you’re reading a website, almost all Internet browsers have a zoom function that you can control with the keyboard. In Windows, you hold down the control key and then press the “+” key to zoom in or the “-” to zoom out. On a Mac, instead of holding the control key, you hold down the command/apple key while pressing the + or – key. Try it now and see how the document changes. Change the text size and your reading distance until you find the right combination that allows you to read with your eyes completely relaxed. I normally make the document appear 50% larger than normal size, but you have to find what’s comfortable for you.

Now adjust the width of the page so that, sitting two and a half feet from the screen, you can easily read from left to right without moving your head. If you have, like many people, made your browser the full screen width, change that now. In Windows, you’ll find three little boxes in the upper right corner of the window you using. The one on the left minimizes the window, the one on the right closes the window. It’s the one in the middle we’re interested in — that’s the one that switches back and forth between full screen and partial screen. For reading, click that middle box so that it shows one little boxes inside it, not two. That’s the one for partial screen setting and in this mode, you can adjust the window size and position as needed.

To position the window, click and hold the title bar to drag the top left of the window to the top left of the screen. Then put your cursor in the lower and change the size of the window that that it’s full height and the right width for reading as described above.

You should now be looking at a window that fills up the screen height but not necessarily its width and has large text that you can read easily and comfortably from two and a half feet away.

We haven’t spent any money yet, but now it’s time to consider the monitor you’re using. Would a bigger monitor be better? It might provide more screen real estate that you could either use to have even larger (and probably clearer and sharper) text or to have more words on the screen at once. I don’t know if you’ve looked at flat screen monitor prices lately, but you can get a very nice 22 or 24 inch LCD monitor for around $200. If you’re still using an old 17″ CRT-style monitor with a rounded front screen, you may want to consider trading up. Flat screen monitors are easier on your eyes than CRT’s and have less glare. Here are some budget-minded suggestions on Amazon — a nice 22 inch monitor for $180 and a nice 24 inch monitor for $200.

You also might want to find a better computer chair. The ones I like are usually in the $50 to $100 range. Basically, I look for a sturdy chair that I can lock so it doesn’t rock back. When I use the computer for normal work, I sit up straight and have the lights on full. Good computer posture is essential for avoiding repetitive stress problems. But when I’m reading on the screen, I lean back in my chair and slouch slightly. In the evening, I turn off the room lights and just use my little desk lamp. You probably will find it undesirable to read your computer screen in an otherwise dark room — I find subdued lighting the best. Remember, the goal is to read with the least amount of stress and strain on your eyes and your body.

Your monitor’s visual characteristics can usually be tuned as well. There are so many variables to this depending on what computer and monitor you have that it is impossible to say very much that would be useful to everyone, but between the computer’s control panels and the little buttons on the front of your monitor, you may find ways to tweak your monitor’s brightness and contrast and other settings for better reading.
One last thing — scrolling. It’s essential to be able to remain relatively motionless if you’re going to settle into a good read. If you have a page-down key on your keyboard, it’s going to become your friend because you will use it repeatedly to scroll an entire vertical page of text at a time. Read all the way to the bottom of the window and just before you hit the page-down key, take a quick note of the last two words of the last line that you can see. Now hit the page-down key (if you have one) and look up at the top of the window and find those two words. Then, keep reading. Try to find a good place and position for your keyboard so that you can hit the page-down key as needed without moving your arm any more than you have to.

If your keyboard doesn’t have a page-down key, generally there’s some keyboard equivalent for page-down, usually <command> + <down-arrow> on a Mac and <fn> + <down-arrow> on Windows. As a last resort, there is a slider bar in the area at the right of the page. Click in the scrolling area below the slider bar to advance a full page at a time. Choose a spot at the very bottom of the scrolling area so that you can click there again and again without moving your mouse.

One last note, you don’t actually need a kindle to read a Kindle books. Kindle editions can easily be read on your computer by downloading Kindle for Mac or Kindle for Windows readers from Amazon. And Sony library offerings can also be read on your computer with this download.

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So I hope you’ll give computer reading a chance. You might like it. There are many advantages to reading soft copy vs. hard copy. First is accessibility. Almost everything in the world is available to you online — books and magazine, journals, poems, newspapers. You can buy a book at your local bookstore (if they carry it and if it’s in stock) but you can buy practically any book in the world online. And for millions of titles, you can start reading instantly.