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E-book
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An e-book (short for electronic book, also written eBook) is the digital media equivalent of a conventional printed book. Such documents are usually read on personal computers, or on dedicated hardware devices known as e-book readers or e-book devices. Many mobile phones can also be used to read eBooks.
History
Early e-books were generally written for specialty areas and a limited audience, meant to be read only by small and devoted interest groups.
Discussion
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Encyclopedia
An e-book (short for electronic book, also written eBook) is the digital media equivalent of a conventional printed book. Such documents are usually read on personal computers, or on dedicated hardware devices known as e-book readers or e-book devices. Many mobile phones can also be used to read eBooks.
History
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.
, new marketing models for e-books were being developed and dedicated reading hardware was produced. E-books (as opposed to ebook readers) have probably already achieved global distribution thanks to the Internet. Actual details are unquantified or unqualified - but of course anyone with a computer can read an ebook - you don't need an ebook reader. Only two e-book readers dominate the market, Amazon's Kindle model or Sony's PRS-500. E-books have seen good growth in Japan throughout the 2000s and it currently has an e-book market worth ¥10 billion. 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.
Experts from Plastic Logic, a display technology company based in Cambridge, UK, reported of a technique that allows printing polymer transistors onto a surface of flexible plastic. This technique makes it possible for the screens to bend and bounce, thus giving the e-books additional endurance.
Formats
Comparison of e-books with printed books
Advantages
- 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.
Disadvantages
- A small book is easier to carry around (less mass and volume) than an e-book.
- 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.
- Looking at a screen for a long time may cause eye strain and sometimes headaches.
- 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 books, e-books are deliberatly prevented from downloading certain formats, meaning the owner has to buy a different model for each format.
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. Books are much more difficult to duplicate in an amateur printing press.
Digital rights management
Anti-circumvention techniques may be used to restrict what the user may do with an e-book. For instance, it may not be possible to transfer ownership of an e-book to another person, though such a transaction is common with physical books. Some devices can phone home to track readers and reading habits, restrict printing, or arbitrarily modify reading material. This includes restricting the copying and distribution of works in the public domain through the use of "click-wrap" licensing, effectively limiting the rights of the public to distribute, sell or use texts in the public domain freely.
Most e-book publishers do not warn their customers about the possible implications of the digital rights management tied to their products. Generally they claim that digital rights management is meant to prevent copying of the e-book. However in many cases it is also possible that digital rights management will result in the complete denial of access by the purchaser to the e-book. With some formats of DRM, the e-book is tied to a specific computer or device. In these cases the DRM will usually let the purchaser move the book a limited number of times after which he cannot use it on any additional devices. If the purchaser upgrades or replaces their devices eventually they may lose access to their purchase. Some forms of digital rights management depend on the existence of online services to authenticate the purchasers. When the company that provides the service goes out of business or decides to stop providing the service, the purchaser will no longer be able to access the e-book.
With digital rights management, it is argued by some to be a more apt use of money for commodity to be a rental or lease rather than a purchase. The restricted book comes with a number of restrictions, and eventually access to the purchase can be removed by a number of different parties involved. These include the publisher of the book, the publisher of the DRM scheme, and the publisher of the reader software. These are all things that are significantly different from the realm of experiences anyone has had with a physical copy of the book.
Production
Some e-books are produced simultaneously with the production of a printed format, as described in electronic publishing, though in many instances they may not be put on sale until later. Often, e-books are produced from pre-existing hard-copy books, generally by document scanning, sometimes with the use of robotic book scanners, having the technology to quickly scan books without damaging the original print edition. Scanning a book produces an image file, which must then be converted into text format by an OCR program. Occasionally, as in some e-text projects, a book may be produced by re-entering the text from a keyboard.
As a newer development, sometimes only the electronic version of a book is produced by the publisher. It is also possible to convert electronic book to a printed book by print on demand. However this an exception as tradition dictates that a book be launched in the print format and later if the author wishes, an electronic version is also produced.
Among the first Internet-only publishers of new e-books were Boson Books, Hard Shell Word Factory and Online Originals, all founded in the mid-1990s. Each pioneered different aspects of what has since become common practice amongst e-book publishers, e.g. the support of multiple formats including PDFs, the payment of much higher royalty rates than conventional publishers, and the online presentation of free samples. Hard Shell Word Factory set the first professional standards for commercial e-books and pioneered author-friendly contracts. Online Originals was the first e-book publisher to win mainstream book reviews (in The Times) and a nomination for a major literary prize (the Booker Prize).
In 2004-2005, many newcomers to e-book publishing have included major print publishers. At the same time, e-publishers have started to offer print versions of many of their titles. Thus the line between the two is fast blurring.
There are some parts of the industry where there are particularly notable leading firms. In the general field of science-fiction and fantasy, Baen Books, an American publishing company established in 1983 by science fiction publishing industry long-timer Jim Baen (1943-2006) has a well-established position. It is a science fiction and fantasy publishing house that specializes in space opera/military science fiction and fantasy (though it does not restrict itself to these subgenres). It is notable for releasing books without DRM in a variety of formats, before hard-copy publication, and pre-releasing ebooks in parts before the hard-copy release. Many older titles are available for free, especially the first book in a series.
E-books have their own bestseller lists, including those compiled by IDPF, BooksOnBoard and Fictionwise. There are two yearly awards for excellence in e-books. The longest-standing and most inclusive of these is the EPPIE award, given by EPIC since 2000. The other is the Dream Realm Award, first awarded to speculative fiction e-books in 2002.
Readers
E-book readers may be specifically designed for that purpose, or intended for other purposes as well. The term is restricted to hardware devices, not software programs.
Specialized devices have the advantage of doing one thing well. Specifically, they tend to have the right screen size, battery lifespan, lighting and weight. A disadvantage of such devices is that they are often expensive when compared to generic devices such as laptops and PDAs.
Prominent examples include:
See also
External links
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