What is an e-book?
Writing on paper is firmly embedded within all cultures, after all, it has taken five thousand years of human development to go from writing on papyrus scrolls to paper. Such a reliable and trusted medium can not possibly be replaced overnight by some new fangled technology, can it?
In a few short years, the Internet has brought delivery of timely digital media to our homes and workplace in an explosive torrent of news feeds, information portals and two way communication. In the past, only the well known publishers of written information were able to command the volume audience required to financially justify the cost of printing and distribution. The voices that got heard, were the loudest and most popular. Times are changing, and we can no hear the voices of millions of authors. Because of digital content and delivery we are no longer steered by the channel of printed media and news monopolised by the few.
The e-book then, is simply a digital-media packaged representation of its paper form. The content is delivered digitally, usually over the Internet. the appearance or layout depends on the digital format that the e-book uses, and the characteristics of the e-reader device used to display it. In fact, ‘display’ can also include reading out loud, as in audio output, as many devices can synthesise a human voice and read aloud a text to you.
Sounds simple, doesn’t it? Well of course, with everyone attempting to capitalize on their own e-book market, the human race busy competing to produce both proprietary and open-source e-book standards, as businesses and idealists compete. Naturally, the tug-of-war spills over into e-book readers, where Book Sellers have their own vested interest in locking ‘their’ e-reader to work best (or only) with books originating from their e-bookstore. Not only that, but the legitimate interest of Authors and publishers, some of whom believe that their interests are only protected if the e-book content is properly encrypted (or ‘locked’ to a user or device), is the right choice.
As of today the result is about ten different major e-book digital formats and a collection of e-readers, some of which can utilised a limited number of e-book formats. On top of this, some of the e-readers only ‘play nice’ with the vendor’s own online bookstore.
