E-Book

E-books have their own bestseller lists, including those compiled by International Digital Publishing Forum, BooksOnBoard and Fictionwise.
There are two yearly awards for excellence in e-books. The longest-standing and most inclusive of these is the EPPIE award, given by EPIC since 2000.The other is the Dream Realm Award, first awarded to speculative fiction e-books in 2002.Some e-books are produced simultaneously with the production of a printed format, as described in electronic publishing, though in many instances they may not be put on sale until later.
Often, e-books are produced from pre-existing hard-copy books, generally by document scanning, sometimes with the use of robotic book scanners, having the technology to quickly scan books without damaging the original print edition. Scanning a book produces a set of image files, which may additionally be converted into text format by an OCR program.Occasionally, as in some e-text projects, a book may be produced by re-entering the text from a keyboard.As a newer development, sometimes only the electronic version of a book is produced by the publisher.
It is also possible to convert electronic book to a printed book by print on demand. However this is an exception as tradition dictates that a book be launched in the print format and later if the author wishes, an electronic version is also produced.There are some parts of the industry where there are particularly notable leading firms. In the general field of science-fiction and fantasy, Baen Books, an American publishing company established in 1983 by science fiction publishing industry long-timer Jim Baen (1943–2006) has a well-established position. It is a science fiction and fantasy publishing house that specializes in space opera/military science fiction and fantasy (though it does not restrict itself to these subgenres).
It is notable for releasing books without DRM in a variety of formats, before hard-copy publication, and pre-releasing ebooks in parts before the hard-copy release. Many older titles are available for free, especially the first book in a series.An e-book (short for electronic book and also known as a digital book, e-book, and e-Book) is an e-text that forms the digital media equivalent of a conventional printed book, sometimes restricted with a digital rights management system.
An e-book, as defined by the Oxford Dictionary of English, is “an electronic version of a printed book which can be read on a personal computer or hand-held device designed specifically for this purpose”.E-books are usually read on dedicated hardware devices known as e-Readers or e-book devices. Personal computers and some cell phones can also be used to read e-books.

1.Availability of Works- Not all books are available as e-books.
2.Changing Technologies- The formats and file types that e-books are stored and distributed in change over time, for instance from advances in technology or the introduction of new proprietary formats. While printed books remain readable for many years, e-books may need to be copied to a new carrier over time. PDF and epub are growing standards, but are not universal.
3.Durability- E-book readers are more susceptible to damage from being dropped or hit than a print book. Due to faults in hardware or software, e-book readers may malfunction and data loss can occur. As with any piece of technology, the reader must be protected from the elements (such as extreme cold, heat, water, etc.), while print books are not susceptible to damage from electromagnetic pulses, surges, impacts, or extreme temperates
4.Aesthetic Appeal- Paper books can be bought and wrapped for a present and a library of books can provide visual appeal, while the digital nature of e-books makes them non-visible or tangible. E-books cannot provide the physical feel of the cover, paper, and binding of the original printed work.
5.Artistry and Author’s Vision- An author who publishes a book often puts more into the work than simply the words on the pages. E-books may cause people “to do the grazing and quick reading that screens enable, rather than be by themselves with the author’s ideas.”  They may use the e-books simply for reference purposes rather than reading for pleasure and leisure.
6.Power and Shelf Life- A book will never turn off or be unusable. The shelf life of a printed book exceeds that of an e-book reader, as over time the reader’s battery will drain and require recharging. Additionally, “As in the case of microfilm, there is no guarantee that [electronic] copies will last. Bits become degraded over time. Documents may get lost in cyberspace…Hardware and software become extinct at a distressing rate.”
7.Picture Books – Books with large pictures (such as children’s books) or diagrams are more inconvenient for viewing and reading
8.Costs- The cost of an e-book reader far exceeds that of a single book, and e-books often cost the same as their print versions. Due to the high cost of the initial investment in some form of e-reader, e-books are cost prohibitive to much of the world’s population. Furthermore, there is no used e-book market, so consumers will neither be able to recoup some of their costs by selling an unwanted title they have finished, nor will they be able to buy used copies at significant discounts, as they can now easily do with printed books through Amazon’s marketplace and other online retailers.
9.Privacy Concerns – E books and software can easily track data, times, usage, pages, and details about what one is reading and how often. Similar to this is the growing amount of data available through Google search engines, Facebook, and through data mining. For the first time in history it is now far more easy to track and record what specific people might be reading. The notions of privacy, private writing, solitude, and personal reading are changing.
10.Additionally, the potential for piracy of e-books may make publishers and authors reluctant to distribute digitally.
11.Security- Because of the high-tech appeal of the e-reader, they are a greater target for theft than an individual print book. Along with the theft of the physical device, any e-books it contains also become stolen. E-books purchased from vendors like Amazon or Barnes & Noble.com are stored “in the cloud” on servers and “digital lockers” and have the benefit of being easily retrieved if an e-reading device is lost. Not all e-booksellers are cloud based; if an e-book is stolen, accidentally lost, or deleted, in the absence of a backup it may have to be repurchased.
12.Limitations of Readers- The screen resolutions of reading devices are currently lower than actual printed materials.Because of proprietary formats or lack of file support, formatted e-books may be unusable on certain readers. Additionally, the reader’s interaction with the reader may cause discomfort, for example glare on the screen or difficulty holding the device.
13.Environmental Concerns- E-book readers require various toxic substances to produce, are non-biodegradable, and the disposal of their batteries in particular raises environmental concerns. As technologies rapidly change and old devices become obsolete, there will be larger amounts of toxic wastes that are not easily biodegradable like paper.

Among the earliest general e-books were those in the Gutenberg Project, started by Michael S. Hart in 1971.
An early e-book implementation were the desktop prototypes for a proposed notebook computer, the Dynabook, in the 1970s at PARC, which would be a general-purpose portable personal computer, including reading books.Similar ideas were expressed at the same time by Paul Drucker.As of 2009[update], new marketing models for e-books were being developed and dedicated reading hardware was produced. E-books (as opposed to ebook readers) have yet to achieve global distribution. In the United States, as of September 2009, the Amazon Kindle model and Sony’s PRS-500 were the dominant ereading devices .
By March 2010, some reported that the Barnes & Noble nook may be selling more units than the Kindle. On January 27, 2010 Apple, Inc. launched a multi-function device called the iPad and announced agreements with five of the six largest publishers that would allow Apple to distribute e-books.However, not all authors have endorsed the concept of electronic publishing. J.K Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series, has stated that there will be no e-versions of her books.Numerous e-book formats emerged and proliferated, some supported by major software companies such as Adobe’s PDF format, and others supported by independent and open-source programmers. Multiple readers naturally followed multiple formats, most of them specializing in only one format, and thereby fragmenting the e-book market even more.
Due to exclusiveness and limited readerships of e-books, the fractured market of independents and specialty authors lacked consensus regarding a standard for packaging and selling e-books. E-books continued to gain in their own underground markets. Many e-book publishers began distributing books that were in the public domain. At the same time, authors with books that were not accepted by publishers offered their works online so they could be seen by others. Unofficial (and occasionally unauthorized) catalogs of books became available over the web, and sites devoted to e-books began disseminating information about e-books to the public.Early e-books were generally written for specialty areas and a limited audience, meant to be read only by small and devoted interest groups.
The scope of the subject matter of these e-books included technical manuals for hardware, manufacturing techniques, and other subjects.
The ease of transferring and storing electronic files gave people the growing opportunities to not have to print all their documents, books, and writings.