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A Writer's Guide to E-Publishing

Part 1 -- The Technology

E-Book Readers

Much of the press about e-publishing has focussed on the e-book. These electronic computerized books are called "dedicated reading devices." Several are already on the market -- including the Rocket eBook, the SoftBook Reader and the Glassbook. Others are on their way. With an e-book reader, users can download hundreds of pages of text into its memory for later reading. The readers are portable, lightweight and convenient, but even their manufacturers will privately admit that the reading experience is less than satisfactory. E-book technology has a long way to go before these devices can provide the visual satisfaction of a printed book. Right now it's on par with the old dot-matrix printers in the early days of pc's and Macs -- readable, but not aesthetically pleasing.

Like most other electronic devices, though, e-book reading devices will continue to evolve. The quality of the readout and the appearance of the text will improve with each new version. The industry will also find a solution to a second problem, compatibility. The early e-book readers are based on competing proprietary systems. A document prepared for SoftBook can't be read on a Rocket eBook, and vice-versa. As more types of devices appear on the market, the compatibility problem will be compounded, unless the major players can agree on a standard through initiatives such as the "Electronic Book Exchange" (EBX) and Open eBook (OEB).

The technological fixes are likely to happen, but whether e-book devices catch on will be up to consumers. For pleasure reading, those of us who have spent our lives cherishing the physical book may find the transition too hard. On the other hand, when the goal is practicality rather than comfort, e-books have clear advantages over physical texts.

With them, college students will be able to download all their texts for an entire term into one portable device, much more economically than buying individual textbooks. A technician in a field can carry all of his or her technical manuals in a single instrument that weighs only a few pounds. Travelers can tote guidebooks to dozens of different cities and countries in their backpacks.

In the short run, the market for e-books will favor reference texts. But it's too early to predict where this technology will lead. A future generation may eventually adopt some kind of e-book reader as their primary reading tool. If this happens, to them our notion of buying and collecting individually printed books will seem as oddly quaint as a penny-farthing bicycle.

Next . . .

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Contents of this article
Part 1 - The Technology
Introduction
What You're Reading Now
E-Book Readers
E-Publishing on Your Computer
Hypertext / HTML
Adobe PDF
Print On Demand
Online Publishing

Part 2 -- The Outlook
Publishing Economics
Some Other Realities
Some Good News & Some Dangers