They are of the latest trends in technology and culture and they are mostly cheaper than the usual hardcover printed books you buy in a bookshop. But where did all this start from?

Actually it began developing much earlier than you probably think. The idea dates back to 1971 when an American called Gutenberg founded a reading project. His wish was to make books available for everybody and therefore break illiteracy and ignorance. Most of the books available were free or had a small charge.

The definition of an e-book that we can find in dictionaries is 'an electronic version of a printed book' although e-books don't necessarily have a printed version. If you're still not familiar with this kind of books you're probably asking yourselves how does this thing work. Well, e-books are meant to be read on special hardware devices known as e-Readers. The top e-readers of today are Amazon's Kindle, Apple's iPad, Barnes & Noble Nook, etc. Their prices range from approximately 150 USD for a Kindle or a Nook to even 850 USD for an iPad since its main function corresponds more to a regular's notebook and not only a book reader. Just like a normal book's paper the e-reader's screen is foldable, pleasant for human's eye and equipped with increased gray-scale level so it can be more similar to a normal printed version. Normally the cheaper ones have buttons for managing the reading but some of them like iPad have touch screen. In that case you turn the pages just by dragging your fingertips on the screen to the left or right side. You can even adjust the font size and lightning in order to make your reading more engaging. Another great thing about them that no one maybe pays a lot of attention is that you can read them in the night without your light on exactly because of this sophisticated lightning system.

So far the e-book invention has had many positive reactions and effects. The sales are rising, the prices of books are dropping, amateurs can easily become writers since the cost of self-publishing is much lower and all of this leads to a more interactive way of reading and writing. Everyone can be a reader and everyone can be a writer. Sales of e-books are overtaking the ones of hardcovers. But are there any bad sides of this new technology overtaking the once priceless physical books? There are, of course and also quite many. The digital versions are more likely to get illegally copied, there are zillions of illegal downloads currently on the web, in fact that's one of the reasons why some writers such as J.K.Rowling refuse to have electronic versions of their books online. But who also could get damaged except writers? Publishers are extremely endangered because of this phenomenon. The bookshops and libraries are afraid of their end because of online bookshops. Also not all e-books are available as printed books, some of them are planned just for the online sale. We can also think on a different level about this. The fact that e-books can't provide a visual appeal means that you can't physically touch the cover, the paper or even feel its smell of antiquity. In my opinion that's the biggest disadvantage of an e-book. All of them look the same, no clear difference between big books and small ones, just random computer files and the only thing that makes any difference is the image of the cover. In the end, summing up all the pros and cons I'm still more into printed ''old-school'' books, maybe because I wouldn't be happy if I had to watch out for my 500$ thingy all the time or just maybe because I'm old-fashioned and still fancy to fill my bookcase with good books and every time I see it remember everything that I've read. |