Ebook

A user viewing an electronic page on an eBook-reading device

An e-book (for electronic book: also 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 cell 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.

As of 2008, new marketing models for e-books are being developed, formats are beginning to homogenize, and dedicated reading hardware has been produced. E-books have achieved global distribution, and electronics manufacturers are releasing more e-book readers for general consumer use, such as Amazon's Kindle model or Sony's PRS-500. E-books have seen tremendous market growth in Japan throughout the 2000s and currently has an e-book market worth ¥10 billion.

Formats

Main article: Comparison of e-book formats

Comparison of E-Books with Print Books

Advantages

• Text can be searched automatically and cross-referenced using hyperlinks, making the e-book format ideal for works that benefit from such functions.
• Less physical space is required to store e-books, and hundreds to thousands of books may be stored on the same device.
• Because they require little space, e-books can be offered indefinitely, with no going out of print date, allowing authors to continue to earn royalties indefinitely.
• Readers who have difficulty reading printed books can benefit from the adjustment of text size and font face.
• Text-to-speech software can be used to convert e-books to audio books automatically.
• E-book devices allow reading in low light or even total darkness by means of a back light.
• An e-book may be more comfortable for some to hold because it need not be held open like a physical book and can also be set down and read without needing to be held.
• It costs little to reproduce or copy an e-book, which is ideal for archival and backup purposes.
• 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 print books.

Disadvantages

• If not viewed on computers, ebooks 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, however, a software application such as Adobe Acrobat is still needed to read e-books.
• Not all publishers produce the e-book equivalent of their print books; thus, it is highly encountered that one may not find the electronic format of a book easily found at a store. Additionally, even if a publisher regularly makes its books available in an electronic format, there might be a considerable time interval between the publication date of the printed version and that of the electronic version.
• All e-book devices require electrical power, resulting in the consumption of electricity.
• Looking at a screen for a long time may cause eye trouble and sometimes headaches.
• Certain e-book formats may become obsolete and incompatible with future devices.
• E-book readers are more likely to be stolen than paper books.
• E-book readers are more fragile than paper books and more susceptible to physical damage.
• As an e-book is dependent on equipment to be read, it can be affected by faults in external hardware or software, such as hard disk drive failure.
• E-books can be 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.
• Screen resolution of reading devices may be lower than actual paper, making it difficult to read e-books.

Equality

• With the pervasiveness of the Internet, both e-books and print books can now be purchased from electronic stores such as Amazon.com and do not require going to a bookstore.

Advantages for Writers

E-books are empowering “would-be” authors in ways that traditional publishing could never accomplish. New methods of publishing and exposing potential readers are allowing individuals to become widely-read authors with no third party intervention. eBook authoring can also be a strong gateway to eventual paper publishing.

Many “ordinary” people have extraordinary stories or a knowledge of niche subjects. However, very few of those have the knowledge of how to create a manuscript, solicit publishing houses and play the political game of getting published.

Very few people know exactly the process that books go through in order to be published. An enormous amount of preparation must be done in order to get your manuscript in front of a publisher, and even if you are able to do so, there is no guarantee that your work will be selected.

Many potentially successful authors have been halted by the roadblocks of traditional publishing complications. Ebooks empower the author to create a medium, and have their books on their own online bookstore. Affiliate program have enabled authors to sell their books through other marketers, similar to a traditional author having their books in multiple bookstores.

Best of all - ebook authors keep 100 percent of the profits of their own books, whereas traditional authors are only able to make anywhere from 2 - 20% of the profits. In a sense authors are working to produce goods for the profit of publishing houses, while providing nominal compensation to the author.

Advances in e-book software have developed a more secure medium for authors to create their art. Readers are now prohibited from a simple copy-and-paste form of piracy. Authors are now empowered to impose other forms of security that protect their creative livelihood.

Lastly, if an author has successfully created an online readership, soliciting a publishing house is going to be that much more compelling. If I can tell my potential publisher that I already have sold thousands from my efforts to promote my book at home, I have already demonstrated that I have an interested an audience, which is the key risk in publishing.

Ebook publishing is empowering authors to cut out the middleman, make more profits, simplify business, and get a foot in the door of traditional publishing houses.

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. Usually, it is possible to convert electronic book to a printed book by print on demand.

E-book publishing as an industry is growing in the double digits yearly, according to the quarterly reports put out by IDPF. 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).

Since the late 1990s, the many newcomers to e-book publishing have included most major print publishers. At the same time, many established e-publishers started to offer print versions of some 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:

• Plastic Logic (2009 estimate)
• Kindle by Amazon (2007)
• Cybook Gen3 by Bookeen (2007)
• Hanlin eReader by Jinke (distributed as "Lbook" in Ukraine, Russia, Estonia and Kazakhstan, and as "BeBook" in Europe) (2007)
• Sony Reader by Sony (2006)
• iLiad by iRex (2006)
• Librié by Sony (2004)

See also

• Accessible publishing
• Blook
• Digital edition
• Digital library
• Expanded Books
• Electronic Publishing
• List of digital library projects
• Networked book
• OpenBerg
• OverDrive, Inc.
• OpenReader Consortium
• Project Gutenberg
• Safari Books Online
• Webserial

References

• Jacob Hiller (Sept 28, 2008). How authors can take advatange of ebooks., The Automated Ebook
• Doctorow, Cory (February 12, 2004). Ebooks: Neither E, Nor Books, O'Reilly Emerging Technologies Conference
• James, Bradley (November 20, 2002). The Electronic Book: Looking Beyond the Physical Codex, SciNet
• Lynch, Clifford (May 28, 2001). The Battle to Define the Future of the Book in the Digital World, First Monday - Peer reviewed journal on the Internet
• Read An E-book Week [1]
• Menta, Robert (December 26, 2000). Read an e-book to your child, go to jail?, MP3 Newswire
• Pastore, Michael (January 28, 2008). 30 Benefits of Ebooks, Epublishers Weekly
• Flint, Eric (2000). "Building the Baen Free Library". Retrieved 2007-07-19.

External links

• Comparison table of current e-book readers
• Electronic Publishing Software