Advantages of e-books | disadvantages of e-books
This page covers advantages and disadvantages of e-books and its basics. It mentions benefits or advantages of e-books and drawbacks or disadvantages of e-books.
What is e-books?
Introduction:
E-books have been launched few years back. It has not become popular just after the launch over traditional paper based books.
After the growth of smart phones, tablets and reading apps, e-books have found surge in the market.
It is most popular among students and professionals due to its digital formats and free access to multiple online platforms such as Google Books, Open Library, Internet Archive, Scribd, Wattpad, Bookish etc.
E-books are available in various languages other than english. In INDIA it is available in regional languages such as Hindi, Gujarati, Tamil, Marathi and Malayalam.
The figure depicts brand of popular e-books such as Kindle, Kobo and Pocketbook.
Following are the typical specifications of e-book.
• Display : 6 inch or 7 inch
• Weight: Light
• Memory storage: 4 GB/8 GB/32 GB
• Resolution: 167 ppi or 300 ppi
• Cloud storage : Free connectivity
• Wireless connectivity: WiFi as per IEEE 802.11b/g/n , 4G LTE
• Charging : USB
• Formats : kindle formats (AZW3, AZW), txt, pdf, html, doc, docx, jpeg, gif, png, pmp through conversion etc.
• Battery life: Up to 4 weeks with single charge
Benefits or advantages of e-books
Following are the benefits or advantages of e-books:
➨It is available at much lower prices online compare to brick and mortar book stores.
➨It can be accessed comfortably even while traveling without any hassles of carrying hard books.
➨Users can carry hundreds of books anywhere they go. Moreover e-books are stored in the reader's online personal account.
➨E-books are available with "search option" and hence they ca easily look up for any information instead of
wasting time turning page after page. One can also bookmark the page after search.
➨Most of the e-books are cloud based. Hence writers or authors can update the connects online immediately.
Due to this, readers can access updated content online. The process avoids investment on re-printing costs and saves time.
➨E-books are equipped with interactive elements for better reading experience.
These contain audio, video and animations which are ideal for childrens and visually impaired people.
➨External links or Hyper links are added with e-books for extra information and other references.
➨In printed book publishing, author has to go through many challenges to get right agent and publishing deals.
E-book publishing is very easy, fast and less time consuming. Amazon's "kindle Direct Publishing" is one such example.
Drawbacks or disadvantages of e-books
Following are the drawbacks or disadvantages of e-books:
➨E-books require power source i.e. battery. As a result, if battery is not charged and power source is not available,
reader is deprived of access of e-books. This creates lot of inconvenience.
➨Files can not downloaded if appropriate software is not installed on e-book devices.
➨Notifications on the e-books distract the readers. This is observed more in phone or tablet.
➨Technologies are evolving very fast. E-books are required to be upgraded accordingly.
Failing so, will lead to risk of losing saved files or books and formatting of documents.
➨There are health issues while reading during night time mostly on tablets and with backlit e-readers.
It can cause sleep deficiency, eye strain and/or damage health.
Conclusion: With technological innovations, free online portals and reduction in price of components, e-books are likely to capture bigger slice in the online reading market.
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