E-Book - Advantages and Disadvantages

E-Book is the short form of Electronic Book. It is generally read on personal computers. Some users also use it on their cell phones, rather, smart phones. It is mainly meant for readers who surf online and want to get any information instantly on the web. These readers are also called e-readers.

Earlier E-books were written for a specific audience and were confined only to a few subjects. With the expansion of the World Wide Web and its density among the users, they have emerged as the main source of knowledge and answers to a lot of questions. E-books are generally available in PDF formats which are easily compatible with all machines around the globe.

Just like we used to have book publishers in the real world, we now have E-book publishers in World Wide Web. Many authors want to have an E-book version of their books to be published while some are against it. One of them is J. K. Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter series. She has made her point clear on the fact that she is not going to publish the electronic version of her Harry Potter series.

E-books have a very broad base and a huge target audience. This is why the E-book business is increasing at a very rapid pace. One can easily find most of the E-books, if available on the internet via Google, a commonly used search engine, which has most the answers to most the questions.

E-books have their own advantage because of which they have gained so much of popularity. First and foremost, they save time. It saves us from going to a shop, purchasing a book or wasting time on home delivery. Overall, this is a time consuming process. And since time is a very important factor in today`s world, E-books provide instant solution to our questions. Moreover, some of them cost us an amount where as there are millions of E-books on the internet which are available for free. Which, we cannot get in the real world so easily.

We can easily search the topic we want to know about on the internet and then easily get numerous E-books on similar topics. They are now also available in mobile phones, as these devices have made the use e-books broader. A user can get any information via E-books from his office directly on his/her mobile phone. This has brought a revolution in the world of internet and communication.

Just like a coin has two sides, E-books too have certain disadvantages. They require a personal computer or a mobile phone to order be used. Its data can be lost if its file format is not supported or changed in the reader`s computer.

Piracy is yet another aspect which has to be thought of while talking about E-books. E-books often encourage piracy and ultimately reduce the profits of the original book publisher. This is probably one of the reasons why the author of the Harry Potter series was not in favor of printing E-books of the same.

There are lots of E-book clubs and websites that can be found on the internet. These clubs and websites cater to almost all the different topics in the world starting from sports, politics, entertainment, history, cookery, psychology and several other topics which one can think of.

You can have access to articles about ebooks in portuguese language from page Books

Roberto Sedycias works as IT consultant for Polomercantil