There are advantages and disadvantages to both. If you don't have space for books then definitely the e-books are preferable. As far as whether the colors are accurate or not doesn't matter to me. If I'm going to use a quilt pattern I'm going to chose my own colors anyway. However, I prefer thumbing through paper books and magazines. At one time I had accumulated so many magazines I ran out of places to put them. So now I go through them before I throw them away and scan the patterns that I want to keep to my laptop. I can categorize them into separate folders to enable me to find them easier. If I need to print them I can, but unless there are applique pieces to use as templates, I usually will just follow the directions right off my laptop. I guess it all depends.