[LIS-Forum] Know more about Electronic Books

[B Sreeharsha]

Hello,          Here is an article that throws light on e-books - their advantages over traditional print documents, Copyright and security issues, how to find e-books in the e-directory, and shop them... Also, you will find some sites permitting to read and download e-books related to Business, IT, General interests... Very interesting one. Have a look
 
Regards
Harsha
 
******************************************************************************************* 
All about e-books
If you're something of a bookworm, the chances are that most of the shelf space in your house will be taken up by paperbacks and hardbacks spanning everything from the latest best-selling autobiography to classic works of fiction.
Books can take up a lot of space, but the birth of the electronic book, or e-book for short, means that you can rid your life of literary clutter. With e-books you can download texts from the internet, often free of charge, and save several books in digital form to a handheld device or notebook computer to read at your leisure. It beats lugging weighty tomes around to keep yourself entertained on holiday.
Now that e-books are becoming increasingly popular, there are more texts (books and magazines) than ever available to download from the internet, and more and more writers and publishers are experimenting with the format.
Four years ago, Stephen King set the pace by launching his novel Riding the Bullet as an e-book download for $2 and was swamped by half-a-million people trying to download it in the first week.
In this feature we'll outline what you need to read an e-book, how much it will cost you and where you can find the free stuff.
The case for e-books
The concept behind electronic books is a simple one: it is to convert text, whether it's a book or a magazine article, into digital form so that it can be read on the screen of a PC, notebook or handheld computer.
Some mobile phones will allow you to read e-books too, and there are even dedicated devices for displaying and reading e-books, such as the Sony Librie, which to date is only available in Japan.
Making books and articles available digitally has several advantages. Perhaps the most obvious plus-point for anyone with a handheld computer is portability. Rather than carrying a book around in your bag, you can download the e-book version to a handheld computer from one of the many e-book websites online.
Depending what software you are using to read e-books (and we'll look at this more closely later on), the e-book version of a paperback bestseller can take up less than 1MB of your handheld computer's memory.
If you're planning a trip or going on holiday and need some reading material for the plane, saving three or four books to your handheld computer could save you a lot of space in your hand luggage.
If you don't own a handheld computer, you can still use a notebook system or a desktop PC to read e-books, although you won't be able to take advantage of the portability aspects we've just looked at.
A notebook computer may not be as light and compact as a book (unless you're reading the hardback version of War and Peace), but if you are taking a notebook computer away with you anyway, it allows you to leave printed copies of books at home.
Using a desktop PC to read e-books may seem pointless to some but if you struggle to read the small typefaces used to print many books, you will appreciate being able to enlarge text on screen to stop you from having to strain your eyes or having to use a magnifier.
E-books are also more interactive than their paper equivalents, often including links to references and further information to explore.
Depending on the specific book you're after, it can also be cheaper to pick up the e-book version online. At the time of writing, Amazon was selling Bill Clinton's autobiography in hardback for £15 plus postage, but many e-book websites were selling the electronic download for $22 (around £12).
Buying an e-book online rather than a hard copy from an online retailer also means you can get stuck in to reading it immediately.
E-book shopping
There are now numerous websites from which you can download e-books, some of which offer free titles. One of the most impressive online collections of free e-books is available from Project Gutenberg.
It features a huge range of classic books and texts from Samuel Pepys's diaries to Louisa May Alcott's Little Women and Shakespeare's Othello. Project Guttenberg produces e-book versions of texts on which the original copyright licence has expired, so there are few, if any, restrictions on sharing the texts you download with friends, provided you do not amend them or use them for commercial purposes.
A quick search at eBook Directory will reveal a wide variety of free texts to download and while in some cases you may need to also download a specific software reader for an e-book, these are usually also free.
If you are looking for e-books covering reference, religious and health topics, you can pick them up free at Free eBooks.net, while computer-related e-books can be downloaded from IT eBooks.
Sci-fi fans will be pleased to hear that the BBC is currently offering a range of e-books based on the Doctor Who TV series, although they are not downloadable.
The aforementioned websites provide a wide variety of reading material but there are plenty of other websites that offer free e-books. Try using a search engine such as Google or Yahoo to help you track down other free texts.
If it's the latest bestsellers you're after, you'll be hard pushed to find these for free, although many publishers will offer a free sample of a book to download so you can dip into it before you decide whether or not you want to buy it.
You can pick up the latest releases in e-book form from websites such as Amazon, Franklin and Handango, often at discounted rates. Also take a look at the selection of recently published books available at eBooks.com.
Be aware, though, that there are legal and copyright restrictions pertaining to sharing e-books that prevent you swapping texts with friends in the same way that you might pass round a printed book. Some e-book programs will stop you from opening e-books on different computers or handheld devices if security measures have been installed when the e-book was produced.
While there are loads of e-books available online, it's not just books that are available as electronic text. Magazines such as Computeractive, Cosmo Girl, PC Magazine and Sporting News can all be bought, downloaded and read via a website called Zinio.
The site sells subscriptions to a number of popular magazines, usually at a discounted price. To read magazines in e-book form that you have downloaded from this site, you'll need the Zinio Reader program, which is free to download and will also allow you to keep track of when the latest editions of your favourite magazines are available. Zinio doesn't offer much free material except for a selection of business magazines.
The right reader
To read an e-book you'll need to download reader software, which is usually free and takes just a few minutes to install. The software you need will depend on the file format of the e-book you are downloading.
To read e-books in PDF format, for example, you'll need a free program called Adobe Acrobat Reader, which is available here.
Microsoft has its own e-book reader, Microsoft Reader, which free to download. If in doubt over which reader you need, look for e-books with the file extension .lit - you'll need Microsoft Reader to read files with this extension. You'll find plenty of e-books in this format at www.mslit.com, some of which are available for free.
Another popular reader is MobiPocket, which can be downloaded free of charge here. You'll find plenty of compatible titles at www.mobipocket.com.
As mentioned, some e-book websites use their own reader software, which can be downloaded free of charge - there should be plenty of on screen instructions to help with this.
In some cases, e-books can be downloaded as program files that run on their own without an e-book reader. Look for the file extension .exe after the name of the e-book file - after downloading such a file, double-click on it to launch the e-book.
Bear in mind, though, that these types of files can also be used to transfer viruses, and you should only download an .exe file to your PC if you're absolutely sure if its origins. Make sure your antivirus software is running and up to date before you do anything.
If you want to read e-books while on the move, you can install the same e-book readers on a notebook computer that you would use on a desktop system. The same applies to handheld computers, although you'll first need to check on the operating system (Palm OS or Pocket PC, for example) to find a compatible reader.
Some of the latest handheld computers include a preloaded e-book reader but these may only be compatible with certain formats, so you may need to install another reader anyway.
Some smaller portable devices such as mobile phones can also be used to read e-books. There are obvious drawbacks here, though, as the smaller screen size limits the amount of text that can be viewed at any one time.
Larger-screened handsets that can be used to access the internet wirelessly are probably the most suitable. O2's XDA II, for example, uses Microsoft Reader for displaying e-books, so you can either download electronic books directly, or use a desktop computer and then transfer the files across.
One major drawback of the XDA II, however, is its £349 price tag, so unless you have fairly deep pockets you might want to think about sticking with a handheld or notebook computer to read books on the move.
DIY authoring
Of course, you needn't merely stop at downloading and reading e-books from the internet. If you've written a book yourself there's nothing to stop you from turning it into an e-book and publishing it yourself online, or creating a newsletter in e-book form for a society or to keep family and friends up to date with your adventures.
There's a selection of e-book production software available online to help you create your own interactive e-book, complete with a front cover, contents page and illustrations. The e-book authoring program yBook, which you can download here, is just one of the pieces of software available for free that will help you create your own electronic books.
You could also try the trial version of Desktop Author from Ebook Publishing Tools, which provides the publishing software, a front cover maker and clip art to help make your own e-books.
Alternatively, download MobiPocket Publisher and you'll be well on your way to creating your own e-book.
Take it as read
E-books are great for keeping you entertained on the move and are a real boon to those who have trouble reading the smaller typefaces used in printed texts. Unlike in the past, there is now a wealth of classic books and poetry available free in downloadable digital form and you can often pick up a recently released bestseller cheaper than you could in the shops.
As most of the software you'll need to read an e-book is available free of charge, there is very little to stop you from dipping into this easily accessible literary library or creating your own texts to share with others.
Copyright concerns
While there are few restrictions on passing on a well-thumbed printed paperback to a similarly minded literature lover in the real world, the restrictions on sharing e-books you have purchased online differ greatly.
Often, you simply won't be able to share a paid-for digital text with others, and the e-book software reader needed to view a text may prevent an e-book from being viewed on another computer.
Check any terms and conditions on a website before you buy an e-book to see if you can send a copy of the e-book to someone else or transfer it to a handheld device.
While free e-books have far fewer restrictions on their distribution, you may still need to visit the website to download each copy. Most free e-books, such as those available from the Project Guttenberg online library, are intended for personal use and cannot be used for commercial purposes.
Copying text from an e-book or amending it in any way infringes copyright laws. Similarly, you shouldn't scan or copy published text to create your own e-books. If you are creating your own e-book, many of the programs that will help you do this offer security features to prevent people copying your words and sharing your book, which is especially handy if you are planning to charge to download it.
Programs such as Virtual Vault at Ebook Security promise to protect e-books from being illegally shared and the MobiPocket Publisher software includes security features to prevent illegal sharing.******************************************************************************************* 
 
 
Sreeharsha BG
Novell Software Development India Pvt. Ltd
AM Industrial Area
#49/1 & 49/3, 7th Mile, 
Hosur Road, Garvebhavi paly Road,
Bangalore - 560 068
INDIA
Phone: 91-80-25731856 E 2000
Visit us @ www.novell.com


-------------- next part --------------
Hello,
          Here is an article that throws light on e-books - their advantages over traditional print documents, Copyright and security issues, how to find e-books in the e-directory, and shop them... Also, you will find some sites permitting to read and download e-books related to Business, IT, General interests... Very interesting one. Have a look
 
Regards
Harsha
 
*******************************************************************************************
 
All about e-books
If you're something of a bookworm, the chances are that most of the shelf space in your house will be taken up by paperbacks and hardbacks spanning everything from the latest best-selling autobiography to classic works of fiction.
Books can take up a lot of space, but the birth of the electronic book, or e-book for short, means that you can rid your life of literary clutter. With e-books you can download texts from the internet, often free of charge, and save several books in digital form to a handheld device or notebook computer to read at your leisure. It beats lugging weighty tomes around to keep yourself entertained on holiday.
Now that e-books are becoming increasingly popular, there are more texts (books and magazines) than ever available to download from the internet, and more and more writers and publishers are experimenting with the format.
Four years ago, Stephen King set the pace by launching his novel
Riding the Bullet
as an e-book download for $2 and was swamped by half-a-million people trying to download it in the first week.
In this feature we'll outline what you need to read an e-book, how much it will cost you and where you can find the free stuff.
The case for e-books
The concept behind electronic books is a simple one: it is to convert text, whether it's a book or a magazine article, into digital form so that it can be read on the screen of a PC, notebook or handheld computer.
Some mobile phones will allow you to read e-books too, and there are even dedicated devices for displaying and reading e-books, such as the Sony Librie, which to date is only available in Japan.
Making books and articles available digitally has several advantages. Perhaps the most obvious plus-point for anyone with a handheld computer is portability. Rather than carrying a book around in your bag, you can download the e-book version to a handheld computer from one of the many e-book websites online.
Depending what software you are using to read e-books (and we'll look at this more closely later on), the e-book version of a paperback bestseller can take up less than 1MB of your handheld computer's memory.
If you're planning a trip or going on holiday and need some reading material for the plane, saving three or four books to your handheld computer could save you a lot of space in your hand luggage.
If you don't own a handheld computer, you can still use a notebook system or a desktop PC to read e-books, although you won't be able to take advantage of the portability aspects we've just looked at.
A notebook computer may not be as light and compact as a book (unless you're reading the hardback version of
War and Peace
), but if you are taking a notebook computer away with you anyway, it allows you to leave printed copies of books at home.
Using a desktop PC to read e-books may seem pointless to some but if you struggle to read the small typefaces used to print many books, you will appreciate being able to enlarge text on screen to stop you from having to strain your eyes or having to use a magnifier.
E-books are also more interactive than their paper equivalents, often including links to references and further information to explore.
Depending on the specific book you're after, it can also be cheaper to pick up the e-book version online. At the time of writing, Amazon was selling Bill Clinton's autobiography in hardback for £15 plus postage, but many e-book websites were selling the electronic download for $22 (around £12).
Buying an e-book online rather than a hard copy from an online retailer also means you can get stuck in to reading it immediately.
E-book shopping
There are now numerous websites from which you can download e-books, some of which offer free titles. One of the most impressive online collections of free e-books is available from
http://www.promo.net/pg Project Gutenberg
.
It features a huge range of classic books and texts from Samuel Pepys's diaries to Louisa May Alcott's
Little Women
and Shakespeare's
Othello
. Project Guttenberg produces e-book versions of texts on which the original copyright licence has expired, so there are few, if any, restrictions on sharing the texts you download with friends, provided you do not amend them or use them for commercial purposes.
A quick search at
http://ebookdirectory.com/ eBook Directory
will reveal a wide variety of free texts to download and while in some cases you may need to also download a specific software reader for an e-book, these are usually also free.
If you are looking for e-books covering reference, religious and health topics, you can pick them up free at
http://www.free-ebooks.net/ Free eBooks.net
, while computer-related e-books can be downloaded from
http://www.itebooks.net/ IT eBooks
.
Sci-fi fans will be pleased to hear that the BBC is currently offering a range of e-books based on the
http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/doctorwho/ebooks Doctor Who TV series
, although they are not downloadable.
The aforementioned websites provide a wide variety of reading material but there are plenty of other websites that offer free e-books. Try using a search engine such as
http://www.google.co.uk/ Google
or
http://uk.yahoo.com/ Yahoo
to help you track down other free texts.
If it's the latest bestsellers you're after, you'll be hard pushed to find these for free, although many publishers will offer a free sample of a book to download so you can dip into it before you decide whether or not you want to buy it.
You can pick up the latest releases in e-book form from websites such as
http://www.amazon.co.uk/ Amazon
,
http://www.franklin.com/ Franklin
and
http://www.handango.com/home.jsp?siteId=1 Handango
, often at discounted rates. Also take a look at the selection of recently published books available at
http://www.ebooks.com/ eBooks.com
.
Be aware, though, that there are legal and copyright restrictions pertaining to sharing e-books that prevent you swapping texts with friends in the same way that you might pass round a printed book. Some e-book programs will stop you from opening e-books on different computers or handheld devices if security measures have been installed when the e-book was produced.
While there are loads of e-books available online, it's not just books that are available as electronic text. Magazines such as Computer
active
,
Cosmo Girl
,
PC Magazine
and
Sporting News
can all be bought, downloaded and read via a website called
http://www.zinio.com/ Zinio
.
The site sells subscriptions to a number of popular magazines, usually at a discounted price. To read magazines in e-book form that you have downloaded from this site, you'll need the
http://www.zinio.com/main Zinio Reader
program, which is free to download and will also allow you to keep track of when the latest editions of your favourite magazines are available. Zinio doesn't offer much free material except for a selection of business magazines.
The right reader
To read an e-book you'll need to download reader software, which is usually free and takes just a few minutes to install. The software you need will depend on the file format of the e-book you are downloading.
To read e-books in PDF format, for example, you'll need a free program called Adobe Acrobat Reader, which is available
http://www.computeractive.co.uk/downloads/103888 here
.
Microsoft has its own e-book reader,
http://www.microsoft.com/reader Microsoft Reader
, which free to download. If in doubt over which reader you need, look for e-books with the file extension .lit - you'll need Microsoft Reader to read files with this extension. You'll find plenty of e-books in this format at
http://www.mslit.com/ www.mslit.com
, some of which are available for free.
Another popular reader is MobiPocket, which can be downloaded free of charge
http://www.computeractive.co.uk/downloads/1122683 here
. You'll find plenty of compatible titles at
http://www.mobipocket.com/en/HomePage/default.asp www.mobipocket.com
.
As mentioned, some e-book websites use their own reader software, which can be downloaded free of charge - there should be plenty of on screen instructions to help with this.
In some cases, e-books can be downloaded as program files that run on their own without an e-book reader. Look for the file extension .exe after the name of the e-book file - after downloading such a file, double-click on it to launch the e-book.
Bear in mind, though, that these types of files can also be used to transfer viruses, and you should only download an .exe file to your PC if you're absolutely sure if its origins. Make sure your antivirus software is running and up to date before you do anything.
If you want to read e-books while on the move, you can install the same e-book readers on a notebook computer that you would use on a desktop system. The same applies to handheld computers, although you'll first need to check on the operating system (Palm OS or Pocket PC, for example) to find a compatible reader.
Some of the latest handheld computers include a preloaded e-book reader but these may only be compatible with certain formats, so you may need to install another reader anyway.
Some smaller portable devices such as mobile phones can also be used to read e-books. There are obvious drawbacks here, though, as the smaller screen size limits the amount of text that can be viewed at any one time.
Larger-screened handsets that can be used to access the internet wirelessly are probably the most suitable. O2's XDA II, for example, uses Microsoft Reader for displaying e-books, so you can either download electronic books directly, or use a desktop computer and then transfer the files across.
One major drawback of the XDA II, however, is its £349 price tag, so unless you have fairly deep pockets you might want to think about sticking with a handheld or notebook computer to read books on the move.
DIY authoring
Of course, you needn't merely stop at downloading and reading e-books from the internet. If you've written a book yourself there's nothing to stop you from turning it into an e-book and publishing it yourself online, or creating a newsletter in e-book form for a society or to keep family and friends up to date with your adventures.
There's a selection of e-book production software available online to help you create your own interactive e-book, complete with a front cover, contents page and illustrations. The e-book authoring program yBook, which you can download
http://www.spacejock.com/yBook.html here
, is just one of the pieces of software available for free that will help you create your own electronic books.
You could also try the trial version of
http://www.ebook-publishing-tools.com/ Desktop Author
from Ebook Publishing Tools, which provides the publishing software, a front cover maker and clip art to help make your own e-books.
Alternatively, download
http://www.computeractive.co.uk/downloads/1123408 MobiPocket Publisher
and you'll be well on your way to creating your own e-book.
Take it as read
E-books are great for keeping you entertained on the move and are a real boon to those who have trouble reading the smaller typefaces used in printed texts. Unlike in the past, there is now a wealth of classic books and poetry available free in downloadable digital form and you can often pick up a recently released bestseller cheaper than you could in the shops.
As most of the software you'll need to read an e-book is available free of charge, there is very little to stop you from dipping into this easily accessible literary library or creating your own texts to share with others.
Copyright concerns
While there are few restrictions on passing on a well-thumbed printed paperback to a similarly minded literature lover in the real world, the restrictions on sharing e-books you have purchased online differ greatly.
Often, you simply won't be able to share a paid-for digital text with others, and the e-book software reader needed to view a text may prevent an e-book from being viewed on another computer.
Check any terms and conditions on a website before you buy an e-book to see if you can send a copy of the e-book to someone else or transfer it to a handheld device.
While free e-books have far fewer restrictions on their distribution, you may still need to visit the website to download each copy. Most free e-books, such as those available from the Project Guttenberg online library, are intended for personal use and cannot be used for commercial purposes.
Copying text from an e-book or amending it in any way infringes copyright laws. Similarly, you shouldn't scan or copy published text to create your own e-books. If you are creating your own e-book, many of the programs that will help you do this offer security features to prevent people copying your words and sharing your book, which is especially handy if you are planning to charge to download it.
Programs such as Virtual Vault at
http://www.ebook-security.com/ Ebook Security
promise to protect e-books from being illegally shared and the MobiPocket Publisher software includes security features to prevent illegal sharing.
*******************************************************************************************
 
 
 
Sreeharsha BG
Novell Software Development India Pvt. Ltd
AM Industrial Area
#49/1 & 49/3, 7th Mile,
Hosur Road, Garvebhavi paly Road,
Bangalore - 560 068
INDIA
Phone: 91-80-25731856 E 2000
Visit us @ http://www.novell.com www.novell.com