An e-book (short for electronic book , also written eBook or ebook ), also known as a digital book, is an e-text that forms the digital media equivalent of a conventional printed book, sometimes restricted with a digital rights management system. An E-book, as defined by the Oxford Dictionary of English, is "an electronic version of a printed book which can be read on a personal computer or hand-held device designed specifically for this purpose" E-books are usually read on dedicated hardware devices known as e-Readers or e-book devices . Some personal computers and cell phones can also be used, especially to read documents in pdf format.
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 2009, 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 three e-book readers dominate the market, Amazon's Kindle model or Sony's PRS-500 and Bookeen with Cybook Gen3 and Cybook Opus. 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 her books.
- 1971: Michael S. Hart launches the Gutenberg Project .
- 1985-1992 Robert Stein starts Voyager Company Expanded Books and books on CD-ROMs.
- 1993: Zahur Klemath Zapata develops the first software to read digital books. Digital Book v.1 and the first digital book is published On Murder Considered as one of the Fine Arts (Thomas de Quincey).
- 1993: Digital Book, Inc. offers the first 50 digital books in Floppy disk with Digital Book Format (DBF).
- 1993: Hugo Award for Best Novel nominee texts published on CD-ROM by Brad Templeton.
- 1993: Bibliobytes, a project of free digital books online in Internet.
- 1995: Amazon starts to sell physical books in Internet.
- 1996: Project Gutenberg reaches 1.000 titles. The target is 1.000.000
- 1998 Kim Blagg obtained the first ISBN issued to an ebook and began marketing multimedia-enhanced ebooks on CDs through retailers including amazon.com, bn.com and borders.com. Shortly thereafter through her company "Books OnScreen" she introduced the ebooks at the Book Expo America in Chicago, IL to an impressed, but unconvinced bookseller audience.
- 1998: Launched the first ebook Readers: Rocket ebook and SoftBook.
- 1998: Cybook / Cybook Gen1 Sold and manufactured at first by Cytale (1998 - 2003) then by Bookeen
- 1998-1999: Websites selling ebooks in English, like eReader.com and eReads.com .
- 2000: Stephen King offers his book "Riding the Bullet" in digital file, it only can be read on a computer.
- 2001: Todoebook.com, the first website selling ebooks in Spanish.
- 2002: Random House and HarperCollins start to sell digital versions of their titles in English.
- 2005: Amazon bought Mobipocket like a strategic positioning.
- 2006: Sony presents the Sony Reader with e-ink.
- 2006: LibreDigital launched BookBrowse as an online reader for publisher content.
- 2007: Zahurk Technologies, Corp,launched the first digital book library on Internet ‘BibliotecaKlemath.com’, ‘loslibrosditales.com’ and ‘digitalbook.us’
- 2007: Amazon launched Kindle in US.
- 2007: Bookeen launched Cybook Gen3 in Europe.
- 2008: Adobe and Sony agreed to share their technologies (Reader and DRM).
- 2008: Sony sells the Sony Reader PRS-505 in UK and France
- 2008: Amazon launched Kindle 2 in US.
- 2009: Bookeen releases the Cybook Opus in the US and in Europe.
- 2009: Amazon releases the Kindle DX in the US.
- 2009: Amazon releases the Kindle 2 International Edition worldwide.
- 2009: Barnes & Noble releases the Nook in the US.
Formats
Main article: Comparison of e-book formatsThere are a variety of e-book formats used to create and publish e-books. A writer or publisher has many options when it comes to choosing a format for production. Every format has its proponents and champions, and debates over which format is best can become intense.
Comparison of e-books with printed books
Advantages
- An e-book can be purchased, downloaded and used immediately, whereas when one buys a book one has to go to a bookshop, or wait for a delivery.
- There are over 2 million free books available for download as of August 2009.
- Educational text books (e-textbooks) can be distributed at a lower cost than print versions per student.
- Second generation e-books (and colour e-readers) have motion capability.
- e-Books can be printed for less than the price of traditional new books using new on demand book printers.
- Text can be searched automatically and cross-referenced using hyperlinks.
- A single e-reader containing several books is easier to carry around (less weight and volume) than the same books (or sometimes even a single book) in printed form. Even hundreds or thousands of books may be stored on the same device. Using removable media even more can be carried around easily.
- Also at a fixed place such as at home it can be an advantage that an e-book collection requires very little space.
- Mobile availability of e-books may be provided for users with a mobile data connection, so that these e-books need not be carried around.
- E-books can allow non-permanent highlighting and annotation.
- E-book websites can include the ability to translate books into many different languages.
- Many E-book readers have the ability to enlarge fonts past standard large-print size.
- The batteries on many readers last for "about a week of sustained reading."
- 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 most e-book readers have only monochrome displays).
- Depending on the device an e-book may be readable in low light or even total darkness. For devices for which this applies, energy consumption for reading without daylight is less than that of a lamp needed for reading a printed book.
- An e-book can automatically open at the last read page.
- While an e-book reader costs much more than one book, the electronic texts are generally cheaper. Moreover, a great share of books are available free of charge. For example, all fiction from before the year 1900 is in the public domain.
- Text-to-speech software can be used to read the text. However, the voice will be auto-generated, thus the quality worse than audiobooks.
- An e-book can be offered indefinitely, without ever going "out of print".
- Depending on possible digital rights management, it may be easy and cheap to produce a back-up for the case that the e-book is lost or damaged, and/or it may be possible to get a free new copy if that happens.
- It is easier for authors to self-publish e-books.
- A free e-book can stimulate the sales of the printed version.
- The production of e-books does not consume paper, ink, etc. Printed books use 3 times more raw materials and 78 times more water to produce
Drawbacks
- Reading e-books requires an electronic device and software. Even in the case of reading it on a personal computer one already has, it may require additional software.
- A small paperback is easier to carry around than a typical e-book reader.
- E-book readers require electrical power; in the case of mobile use, the battery can get exhausted.
- E-book readers are more susceptible to drop damage.
- E-book readers can malfunction and e-books can be damaged due to faults in hardware or software.
- "As in the case of microfilm, there is no guarantee that copies will last. Bits become degraded over time. Documents may get lost in cyberspace...Hardware and software become extinct at a distressing rate."
- E-books may cause people "to do the grazing and quick reading that screens enable, rather than b