eBooks – The New Publishing House
It is no secret why most individuals prefer eBooks over traditional books. Communication with electronic information is much faster than with physical paper. It is also much cheaper, more widely available, and constantly being updated.
Gone are the days where eBooks were only available to arduously read via your computer monitor. With the development of new portable eBook readers and a large variety of mobile devices, many publishing houses have shifted their focus to producing a much wider variety of eBooks, and at a much higher level of production.
Instant Information
With the instant availability of food, products, and information, readers are demanding a faster rate in which to get books. With eBooks, obtaining the latest vampire, zombie, pirate, or other popular novel is easier and faster than ever. Those not concerned with the tactility of books have embraced this new technology.
Most eBook readers allow direct access to the Internet or to an eBook marketplace. Here, the user can purchase whole books, read sample sections, or download free, featured products. The time it takes to decide you want to read something and the time it takes to actually read it, aside from the negligible amount of time it takes to download the file, has become virtually instant. Though the popularity of books has been consistently waning, the emergence of the eBook has made reading a book more available and more acceptable.
Cost Benefit
If you do not count the library as a source for reading material, then eBooks are the least expensive way to read book-length information. The bulk of the price for a book goes toward the materials it takes to create the physical pages and content. When you remove the materials, then the cost of distributing the content becomes much less. However, some publishers may continue to charge full price for new releases or best sellers in eBook form simply because many people will pay full price.
The Internet has created an environment that facilitates a greater freedom of information to the public. Books that have become public domain may be available through some eBook marketplaces as free content. This can prove beneficial to students in classical literature classes or to anyone who enjoys reading relatively old books. Physically collecting public domain books can become quite expensive, even though they are freely available to anyone.
Though some traditional books may go out of print, eBooks, once published, always exist on the web. While you may not be able to recover a physical book, you can always recover an eBook. Some publishers may release free copies of an eBook to facilitate the sale of the printed book, while some books exist only in electronic form.
Problems With eBooks
There are some downfalls to eBooks as well. Screens can be difficult to read in certain lights and if you do not live in a Wi-Fi-rich area it may be difficult to acquire new books. Some readers like to mark words, sentences, or whole sections as they read, which may prove difficult on an eBook reader.
There is also the long-standing argument about the experience of reading a book. Some readers may find eBook readers to feel artificial or they may feel removed from the material rather than engrossed by it. Though traditional books may not be phased out forever, it appears that eBooks will dictate the future of publishing.
