E –BOOKS

E-Books are the easiest and cheapest way to access books. E-Book is the digital format of a conventional printed book . E-Book is the abbreviation of ‘ Electronic Book' . This widely used technology is rapidly changing and developing everyday. The hardware device that is required for reading any digital format is occasionally termed as an ‘ E-Book Reader' or an ‘ E-Book Device' . The concept of E-book was initiated by Michael Hart.

The E-Books are often published right after the original hard-cover book is released in the market. But usually it is produced from pre-existing printed books. There are two ways to produce an E-Book. One is through scanning and the other one is by directly entering the texts from the keyboards. Normally the first method is used for it saves a lot of time and labor. In this case the pages of a printed book are scanned and digitally transformed with the help of ‘ Robotic Scanner' . These scanned images are later converted into text format to get the complete result. These E-Books are viewed on computer screens.

There are multiple formats in which E-Books can be produced. The publishers have a wide range of choice. Each format is unique and has several advantages and disadvantages respectively. Some of the E-Book formats available are:

•  Mobipocket format

•  DNL or EXE format

•  “doc” or “txt”

•  “PDF” or “html”

•  “rtf” format

•  Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML)

•  OPF format

E-Books have several advantages and disadvantages . The advantages of these books are listed below:

•  The most key advantage of an E-Book is that it takes very little space and thousands of them can be stored and carried together on a single device.

•  The pages and letters can be magnified or reduced accordingly keeping the original file intact.

•  The files can be instantly copied.

•  The instant distribution allows immediate access which is very convenient for the readers.

•  E-Books can be preserved for a life time without any damage.

•  E-Books are much less expensive than printed books.

•  The E-Books reach to a larger audience and readers from distant countries can read the same book at the same time.

The most important disadvantage of E-Books is that it is accessible to all. It can easily be changed, copied or even damaged. Another disadvantage is that books with larger images, illustrations, photographs and huge maps or diagrams cannot be published as E-Books Apart from these disadvantages, there is an additional disadvantage that many readers still prefer reading the printed versions rather than reading them from the computer screen.

Few examples of E-Books:

•  ‘The Secret' by Rhonda Byrne

•  ‘And Then He Kissed Her' by Laura Lee Guhrke

•  ‘The Intention Experiment' by Lynne McTaggart

•  ‘Blink' by Malcolm Gladwell

•  ‘The Memory Keeper's Daughter' by Kim Edwards

Earlier in the 1990s there were only few Internet book publishers like ‘Boson Books', ‘Hard Shell Word Factory' and ‘Online Originals'. Today the E-Book publishing industry is growing doubly every year.