Emergence of e-books

The idea of e-books is not new, ever since there have been computers. People have envisioned using them to store and access individual titles or vast libraries. Over the last two decades, a number of important factors have influenced the need for and development of e-books:

• the advent of desktop publishing;
• the growing importance of paperless publishing;
• the ease with which electronic information can be created, updated, copied, shared, distributed and searched;
• the more widespread availability of both local and global computer based communication networks; and
• the incipient onset of the electronic information explosion.

Recently e-books caught the popular imagination and showed real promise of succeeding in the consumer marketplace. Several factors have converged to make this happen:

• advances in computer hardware and software;
• Internet improvements to facilitate the electronic exchange of text and data; and
• easy Web applications using enabling technologies such as HyperText markup language (HTML), extensible markup language (XML) and portable document format (PDF) as underlying standards.

The Web has made publishers realize that they need not choose between print and electronic publishing. Publishers are increasingly re-purposing the electronic files used in the production of print, and some are re-engineering their editorial and production processes to produce files better suited to electronic products in the first place. Currently, several modes of electronic publishing are available. Many journals are delivered by subscription over the Web; reference, legal and medical books are on CD-ROM or DVD-ROM and are becoming more Web savvy. In the context of e-books, they are more often referred to as a single volume, such as a trade book that can be bought over the Web and read in a laptop, a desktop computer, a PDA, or a dedicated e-book reading device.

Definition of an e-book

Some confusion persists about what the term e-book refers to: is it a piece of book shaped hardware, or the words and images on a piece of hardware, or both. The term book denotes both the message (words and images) and the medium (bound paper). The one without the other is not a book.

The select definitions of an e-book include:

• An e-book is a term used to describe a text analogous to a book that is in digital form to be displayed on a computer screen (Cox and Mohammed, 2001).
• A book that has been converted to digital form and could be read on a computer, usually through network services or CD-ROM. E-books could expand over print media by adding hypertext links, search and cross-reference functions and multimedia (Computer User, 2002).
• An e-book is a digital reading material that one views on a desktop or note-book computer or on a dedicated, portable device with a large storage capacity and the ability to download new titles through a network connection (Adobe Systems, 2001).
• E-books are books in computer file format and read on all types of computers, including handheld devices designed specifically for reading e-books; e-books are as familiar as their print counterparts or as unique as the electronic medium itself, containing audio, video or live hyperlinks; they can be delivered by download or e-mail file attachment; e-books on diskette or CD-ROM are sent by postal mail or sold in bookstores (Brooker, 2000).
• An e-book refers to electronic files of words and images that are of book length, formatted for display on one or more devices known as e-book readers, and sold or distributed as standalone products; e-book readers are defined as the devices used to read e-books; these could be handheld or not, dedicated or not; the software that enables the display of e-books on PCs or other devices may be referred to as e-book reader software, even though some software companies such as Microsoft refer to their applications as readers (NetRead, 2000).

From the above definitions, a more comprehensive definition for an e-book could be derived: text in digital form, or a book converted into digital form, or digital reading material, or a book in a computer file format, or an electronic file of words and images displayed on a desktop, note-book computer, or portable device, or formatted for display on dedicated e-book readers.

Types of e-books

The e-book arena is in a state of flux and the concept of an e-book is not attached to one single medium in the way that DVDs or CDs are. Therefore, it is appropriate to introduce a classification of the various types of e-books. Hawkins (2000) and Crawford (2000) have attempted to identify the various concepts, products and models. Hawkins has identified four types based on content availability and access, while Crawford identified nine types based on proprietary formats, standards, media form, length of contents and access. These are listed at Table I with their characteristics and major players in the market.

Date: 2014-12-22; view: 1276