eBookResults

An e-book (short for electronic book, also written eBook) is the digital media equivalent of a conventional printed book. E-books are usually read on personal computers or smart phones, or on dedicated hardware devices known as e-book readers or e-book devices. Many mobile phones can also be used to read eBooks.

What is the History of eBooks?

Early e-books were generally written for specialty areas and a limited audience, meant to be read only by small and devoted interest groups. The scope of the subject matter of these e-books included technical manuals for hardware, manufacturing techniques, and other subjects.

Numerous e-book formats emerged and proliferated, some supported by major software companies such as Adobe's PDF format, and others supported by independent and open-source programmers. Multiple readers naturally followed multiple formats, most of them specializing in only one format, and thereby fragmenting the e-book market even more. Due to exclusiveness and limited readerships of e-books, the fractured market of independents and specialty authors lacked consensus regarding a standard for packaging and selling e-books.

E-books continued to gain in their own underground markets. Many e-book publishers began distributing books that were in the public domain. At the same time, authors with books that were not accepted by publishers offered their works online so they could be seen by others. Unofficial (and occasionally unauthorized) catalogs of books became available over the web, and sites devoted to e-books began disseminating information about e-books to the public.

As of 2008^[update], new marketing models for e-books were being developed and dedicated reading hardware was produced. E-books (as opposed to ebook readers) have yet to achieve global distribution. Only two e-book readers dominate the market, Amazon's Kindle model or Sony's PRS-500. However, not all authors have endorsed the concept of electronic publishing. J.K Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series, has stated that there will be no e-versions of the books.

What are the advantages of e-Books over printed books?

• Text can be searched automatically and cross-referenced using hyperlinks.
• A single e-book reader containing several books is easier to carry around (less mass and volume) than the same books in printed form. Even hundreds or thousands of books may be stored on the same device.
• E-books can allow non-permanent highlighting and annotation.
• Font size and font face can be adjusted.
• E-books may allow animated images or multimedia clips to be embedded.
• E-books allow for greater fidelity in colour reproduction compared to CMYK colour printing (although some e-book readers have only monochrome displays).
• E-book devices allow reading in low light or even total darkness by means of a back light.
• An e-book can automatically open at the last read page.
• While an e-book reader costs more than one book, the electronic texts are generally cheaper.
• Text-to-speech software can be used to convert e-books to audio books automatically.
• Also for the supplier e-books require little space, they can therefore be offered indefinitely, with no going out of print date, allowing authors to continue to earn royalties indefinitely.
• It is easier for authors to self-publish e-books.
• Ease of distributing e-texts means that they can be used to stimulate higher sales of printed copies of books.
• Although they require electricity to be read, the production of e-books does not consume the paper, ink, and other resources that are used to produce printed books.

What are the disadvantages of e-Books over printed books?

• E-book readers are more fragile than paper books and more susceptible to physical damage.
• If not viewed on computers, e-books require the purchase of an electronic device and/or peripheral software which can display them. If they are to be viewed on a personal computer, it may require additional software.
• E-book readers require electrical power; in the case of mobile use, the battery can get exhausted.
• E-book readers can malfunction due to faults in hardware or software, such as hard disk drive failure.
• E-book readers are more likely to be stolen than paper books.
• Most publishers don't produce the e-book equivalent of their printed books. In other cases, e-books are given a lower priority in terms of the publisher's resources, resulting in a disparity in product quality, release dates and the like. This problem is not endemic to every publisher, but has an effect on the quality of the overall pool of merchandise available.
• E-books can be easily hacked through the use of hardware or software modifications and widely disseminated on the Internet and/or other e-book readers, without approval from the author or publisher.
• If an e-book device is stolen, lost, or broken beyond repair, all e-books stored on the device may be lost. This can be avoided by backup either on another device or by the e-book provider.
• There is a loss of tactility and aesthetics of book-bindings. Also lost is the ability to very quickly riffle through the pages to search for a particular section or to get a sense of the book merely by sight.
• Screen resolution of reading devices may be lower than actual paper, making it difficult to read e-books.
• From the reader's perspective, conventional ownership, fair use, and access to the book's content is challenged and restricted by Digital Rights Management.
• While the written language is universal for printed books, e-books are deliberately prevented from downloading certain formats, which makes it necessary for the owner to buy a different model to read each format.
• E-book readers like all electronic devices are an environmental hazard because of short lifetime. After a maximum lifetime of ten years at-most, they end up in landfills unlike the Book which can be archived, preserved or passed on through generations.

The greatest disadvantage in an e-book is piracy. Most proprietary software were termed secure but soon pirated copies flooded the underground market. The same could be said of the e-book as well.