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.
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.
