What is an eBook?
An eBook is a book published in electronic form, which can be delivered to any computer connected to the internet from anywhere in the world. Hence, the letter 'e' to the left indicates that this is an electronic book. An eBook is simply a software that can be downloaded on or from the internet for reading pleasure in your home or office computer. eBooks are an interesting and convenient way to get the information you need when you need it.
24 Benefits of eBooks
Found on the eBook community mailing list, this excellent set of reasons are why ebooks are incredibly beneficial to the world. Thanks to Michael Pastore of Publishers Cafe Blog for posting it and allowing others to re-post it.
1. Ebooks promote reading. People are spending more time in front of screens and less time in front of printed books.
2. Ebooks are faster to produce than paper books and allow readers to read books about current issues and events.
3. Ebooks are easily updateable for correcting errors and adding information.
4. Ebooks are searchable. Quickly you can find anything inside the book. Ebooks are globally searchable. You can find information in many eBooks.
5. Ebooks are portable. You can carry an entire library on one CD, DVD or laptop.
6. Ebooks preserve books. The library of Alexandria was burned and the collection ruined. Richard Burton's wife, after his death and against his wishes, destroyed a book he had been working on for ten years. The original manuscript of Carlyle's The French Revolution was lost when a friend's servant tossed it into the fire. Ebooks are ageless. They do not burn, mildew, crumble, rot, or fall apart. Ebooks ensure that literature will endure.
7. Ebooks are good for the environment. Ebooks save trees. Ebooks eliminate the need for filling up landfills with old books. Ebooks save transportation costs and the pollution associated with shipping books across the country and the world.
8. Ebooks can be printable and thereby give a reader most or all of the advantages of a paper-based book.
9. Ebooks defy time. They can be delivered almost instantly.
10. Ebooks defy space. Ebooks online can be read simultaneously by thousands of people at once.
11. Ebooks are cheaper to produce and to purchase.
12. Ebooks can be annotated without harming the original work.
13. Ebooks make reading accessible to persons with disabilities. Text can be resized for the visually impaired. Screens can be lit for reading in the dark.
14. Ebooks can be hyper-linked for easier access to additional information.
15. Ebooks -- with additional software and hardware -- can read aloud to you.
16. Ebooks let you tweak the style. Many eBooks allow readers to change the font style, font size, page size, margin size, colors and more.
17. Ebooks may allow the option for the addition of multimedia, such as still images, moving images and sound.
18. Ebooks, with their capacity for storage, encourage the publishing of books with many pages such as books that might be too expensive to produce (and purchase) in paperback.
19. Ebooks are evolving. As technology develops, ebooks may contain new features. For example, a book of recipes may contain a recipe calculator to figure how much maple syrup is needed to bake 200 cookies. An eBook that prepares you for the GRE could include an interactive test. An eBook about politics might allow you to click a link and register to vote, or send an email to a Presidential candidate that tells him he is not a good environmental steward.
20. Ebooks empower individuals to write and to publish, and in this way help to challenge "the crushing power of big publishing" that excludes so many authors from the New York City publishing circus. Publishing can move from the impersonal and profitable to the personal and pleasurable.
21. Ebooks allow publishers to publish (and readers to read) works by a larger number of authors, and works on a wider variety of topics. Critics of traditional book publishing state that economic pressures have reduced and limited the number of authors and topics that traditional publishers will now produce.
22. Ebooks defeat attempts at censorship. All these works were banned: Analects by Confucius; Lysistrata by Aristophanes; Ars Amorata by Ovid; Pro Populo Anglicano Defensio by John Milton; The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne; Wonder Stories by H.C. Anderson; Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman; The Kreutzer Sonata by Leo Tolstoy; The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain; and Ulysses by James Joyce. Many of these books were confiscated, burned or denied availability in libraries, bookstores and schools. Ebooks guarantee that readers maintain their right to read.
23. Ebooks -- thanks to the simplicity and speed of publication and feedback -- allow authors to experiment in many themes and styles.
24. Ebooks are good for paperbook publishing. By setting an example for diversity and freedom of expression, eBooks may motivate the stagnant book publishing industry towards the renewal of small presses, the end of the blockbuster-bestseller publishing mentality, and a healthier balance between the needs of commerce and culture."
In closing, I'd like to say if all readers knew how many books are destroyed on a yearly basis, and how many trees were chopped to make paper, perhaps they'd all rush out and buy a laptop computer for the purposes of buying eBooks. Ebooks are the wave of the future and regular books will soon become a rare commodity. Also, not only are e-books much easier to transport, but you can take as many along on a journey as you like. Just imagine, you're going on holidays, you have to take several planes to get to your destination, and you're lugging ten books along to read on the beach. You can have twenty books stored on one device, or more, or on the laptop many travelers now take along on their trips. I say read eBooks and go green. You will be glad you did.
