In an earlier post I jotted down a few major disadvantages to e-books. Obviously, I am not anti-e-book. If I were, it would make no sense that I would invest in any e-books via Bible software, but I most certainly have purchased a few titles. And while I still pour more money into real books than e-books, here a few distinct advantages e-books have over their counter parts (but you'll have to forgive me. Even in listing advantages, I can't help but add more weaknesses to e-books. In case you can't tell, I think the market for e-books has a long way to go to be caught up with its fraternal folio.)
1. In theory (and, generally, in practice),
e-books are cheaper than real books. This should be the general rule, since the price should not include the cost to put together a physical book. However, it appears to me that many mainstream publishers have not yet decided on their policy in the e-book sphere or their policy is in flux. Now instead of the old-tymie conundrum where consumers purchased the higher priced hard-cover books and later bought the paperback edition, we have consumers who are paying for the real book and then later paying a similar price for the same book in electronic format. In a perfect world, if you've already purchased a title, you should own some kind of rights or discount to an electronic version of that book, but that is only a dream world.
2.
E-books offer powerful searching capabilities. This is probably the single biggest advantage e-books have over physical books. In fact I think it is this capability alone which is driving the e-book market. Depending on what type of e-book you have, there are many ways to search for words and phrases which simply are not possible with real books. However, the more Google and Amazon push the ability to search text within books, I wonder if this will decrease the value of e-books. After all, if I already own the book, and Google or Amazon allows me to search for words or phrases within the book for free, that almost entirely eliminates the major advantage of an e-book and saves me hundreds of dollars. Only time will tell how this advantage plays out.
3.
E-books allow integration between other resources. This is another advantage that users often cite for the reason why they prefer e-books. With a click of the mouse (or even less), a user can mouse over Gen 2:5 and have a pop up window show what that verse says. With another click of the mouse a user can hop back and forth from book citation to the actual text of that citation in its original source. Now to be sure, this is all possible with real books, but I think this merits its own advantage.
4.
E-books can save time. This corresponds to the previous advantage. If I can simply look up another reference by clicking on something, that does generally save time. It is also possible that e-books save time because of the 2nd advantage above. If you can quickly find a word or phrase that you're looking for by searching for it, that could also help save the time it would take to look up each entry in the index.
Well just like last time, there are certainly more advantages that could have been listed. Maybe you want to add them, so post a comment, to remind me how silly I am. Like I said earlier. I will probably keep buying e-books because some of the advantages are worthwhile, but when push comes to shove, you're more likely to see me lounging in the easy chair than crowded over an LCD screen finishing off the final book of
Harry Potter.
