E-books, who knew that they were going to be a huge hit? This paper looks at e-books from several different perspectives. It picks a part the pros and cons to having and using e-books and talks through them in depth. I have compiled different articles on the matter and tried to listen to both sides. I personally do not care whether we turn to e-books or not. I think that it would be a convenient tool but, also i think that there would be a lot of down falls. I think that the pros and cons evenly weigh out each other.
Ebooks
Kait Eusebio
Dr. Stuart
English 102
30 March 2010
E-Books
Let us first talk about what an Ebook is. An Ebook is a computer like device that can hold all your books electronically. You can save your spot, highlight, take it on a plane, read it at night without the assistance of a light, etc. Sounds like a pretty cool toy right? In this day and age, all of our music is compiled into one easy hand held device, along with our files, documents, and pictures, even our phones are more technologically advanced than ever. Who knew that the “things” called books would become a part of this technologically sound world? I am a lover of technology, I love my laptop, phone, iPod and my technology savvy car, so don’t get me wrong. But, do we need to become so reliant on “things” that; take just one accident to break, crash and shut down?
I bet your wondering what’s so bad about an Ebook? I think that there are no wrongs or rights set in stone, yes’s and no’s or pros and cons. Everyone has or will have their own opinion about Ebooks. Ebooks will simply bring a mixture of positives and negatives .
We’ll cover the negatives first . The biggest problem that I see with the “Ebook Revolution” is that they are very expensive . The Nook, The Kindle and the iPad are examples of Ebooks . The device alone can range between $260-$860, that’s not including the books themselves which you have to download . Those can range from a variety of prices, so unless you have deep pockets this is one gadget that you could probably get around to using.
Other than price, let’s talk about pirating . Just like the iPod or any Mp3 player, the Ebook would bring along the issue of pirating . New ways to prevent Ebook pirating would have to be created to protect the intellectual property of the authors and publishers (Book Report). Amazon.com’s way of fixing Ebook pirating is by “authorizing” each download. Rights holders have requested that Amazon remove all unauthorized Ebooks, this caused a lot of readers to lose the boks that they had purchased (Miles). Also, Amazon has put a limit as to how many times the book can be downloaded. So, if you download the book for one Kindle and wanted to buy it for another Kindle, Amazon will not permit you to download the same Ebook twice (Miles). One question amongst many is compatibility. Can Ebooks that you download for a Kindle be used for a Nook? The answer is no. But, options have been created by outside sources to convert the books. Amazon and Barnes and Noble do not allow you to convert the books you buy directly from their site to be used for another (Miles).
“One con is that currently not all content is available in electronic form” (Wasshuber). It will take an elongated amount of time to get a good majority of printed literature into Ebook format, which is somewhat of a major kink. Other arguments include battery life, the loss of touch between the book and the reader and resolution (Wasshuber). Just like our phones and laptops everything that requires a battery and a plug is a disaster waiting to happen. Anything could go wrong and the chance that you could potentially lose all your books is likely. Also, what will happen to our libraries and newspaper stand? How will towns and cities upgrade? Lastly, some people will argue that Ebooks will continue society’s walk towards, simply being lazy . A lot of questions are being raised because of Ebooks.
On to the positives. “Have you ever tried to take your library with you on your next trip?” (Book Report). Now the ability to literally take your whole library wherever you go exists. One of the biggest plus’s to having an Ebook is having the ability to take your favorite novels or texts with you. Shelf space with electronic book is nothing compared to a whole shelf full of books that take up space. The Ebooks come along with so many different features that you can use to help you along your “literature journey”. Features like, “Being able to do a full text search in a single book or a whole library of books, is clearly the number one advantage of Ebooks” (Wasshuber). As well as being able to highlight and mark without damaging, text to speech, you can add audio, video, and images to your text and other features which make the Ebook more appealing. The text to speech feature gives you the option to having a book read to you. So, reading Green Egg’s and Ham & Goodnight Moon for the 100th time to your kids just got a little easier, but is replacing a parent for an Ebook really a plus?
Like the paragraph above let’s talk about money. We said that the prices of the Ebook device are high but, what about the books themselves? According to some, “Usually one can see 10% to 30% price reductions for the ebook version” (Book Report). You can decide whether that saves you money or not. Another advantage to the Ebook is that publishers and vendors save money on printing and distribution costs (Book Report), sounds good for authors who are just now getting into the writing world (Wasshuber).
One of the bigger arguments is that the Ebook is environmentally sound. By converting all books and future books waiting to be written into this format will save extreme amounts of paper and will cut paper production down tremendously. Finally, and not as importantly we would all like to have a nifty little computer like device that houses all of our text and books in one place, it’s very convenient.
My opinion on Ebooks is this. To be honest, I don’t care Ebooks or no Ebooks. Society has gone on without them and will continue to go on with them. I will be honest and say that the only thing stopping me from getting an Ebook is $300. I think having a cool gadget like that would be helpful and convenient as a student but it’s no different than reading an actual paper book. I can’t say that I can literally pick a side between the two. Do Ebooks save paper? Yes. Are they expensive? Yes. Are they cool? Yes. Can it save lives? I don’t know, maybe one day it will be able to. I simply say this, Ebooks are a great tool to have and are a great convenience, but I’m perfectly fine without them.
Sources Cited
Book Report. "Ebooks: Friend or Foe?" Book Report 21.1 (2002): 50-53.
Academic Search Premier. Web. 8 Apr. 2010.
Chris Wasshuber. "Pros and Cons of Ebooks." Lybrary.com. Lybrary.com, 2010.
Web. 8 Apr. 2010.
<http://www.lybrary.com/free_ebooks/pros_and_cons_of_ebooks.pdf>.
Miles, Ginny. "The Pros and Cons of Buying E-Books." PC World 27.10 (2009):
34. Academic Search Premier. Web. 11 Apr. 2010.
Dr. Stuart
English 102
30 March 2010
E-Books
Let us first talk about what an Ebook is. An Ebook is a computer like device that can hold all your books electronically. You can save your spot, highlight, take it on a plane, read it at night without the assistance of a light, etc. Sounds like a pretty cool toy right? In this day and age, all of our music is compiled into one easy hand held device, along with our files, documents, and pictures, even our phones are more technologically advanced than ever. Who knew that the “things” called books would become a part of this technologically sound world? I am a lover of technology, I love my laptop, phone, iPod and my technology savvy car, so don’t get me wrong. But, do we need to become so reliant on “things” that; take just one accident to break, crash and shut down?
I bet your wondering what’s so bad about an Ebook? I think that there are no wrongs or rights set in stone, yes’s and no’s or pros and cons. Everyone has or will have their own opinion about Ebooks. Ebooks will simply bring a mixture of positives and negatives .
We’ll cover the negatives first . The biggest problem that I see with the “Ebook Revolution” is that they are very expensive . The Nook, The Kindle and the iPad are examples of Ebooks . The device alone can range between $260-$860, that’s not including the books themselves which you have to download . Those can range from a variety of prices, so unless you have deep pockets this is one gadget that you could probably get around to using.
Other than price, let’s talk about pirating . Just like the iPod or any Mp3 player, the Ebook would bring along the issue of pirating . New ways to prevent Ebook pirating would have to be created to protect the intellectual property of the authors and publishers (Book Report). Amazon.com’s way of fixing Ebook pirating is by “authorizing” each download. Rights holders have requested that Amazon remove all unauthorized Ebooks, this caused a lot of readers to lose the boks that they had purchased (Miles). Also, Amazon has put a limit as to how many times the book can be downloaded. So, if you download the book for one Kindle and wanted to buy it for another Kindle, Amazon will not permit you to download the same Ebook twice (Miles). One question amongst many is compatibility. Can Ebooks that you download for a Kindle be used for a Nook? The answer is no. But, options have been created by outside sources to convert the books. Amazon and Barnes and Noble do not allow you to convert the books you buy directly from their site to be used for another (Miles).
“One con is that currently not all content is available in electronic form” (Wasshuber). It will take an elongated amount of time to get a good majority of printed literature into Ebook format, which is somewhat of a major kink. Other arguments include battery life, the loss of touch between the book and the reader and resolution (Wasshuber). Just like our phones and laptops everything that requires a battery and a plug is a disaster waiting to happen. Anything could go wrong and the chance that you could potentially lose all your books is likely. Also, what will happen to our libraries and newspaper stand? How will towns and cities upgrade? Lastly, some people will argue that Ebooks will continue society’s walk towards, simply being lazy . A lot of questions are being raised because of Ebooks.
On to the positives. “Have you ever tried to take your library with you on your next trip?” (Book Report). Now the ability to literally take your whole library wherever you go exists. One of the biggest plus’s to having an Ebook is having the ability to take your favorite novels or texts with you. Shelf space with electronic book is nothing compared to a whole shelf full of books that take up space. The Ebooks come along with so many different features that you can use to help you along your “literature journey”. Features like, “Being able to do a full text search in a single book or a whole library of books, is clearly the number one advantage of Ebooks” (Wasshuber). As well as being able to highlight and mark without damaging, text to speech, you can add audio, video, and images to your text and other features which make the Ebook more appealing. The text to speech feature gives you the option to having a book read to you. So, reading Green Egg’s and Ham & Goodnight Moon for the 100th time to your kids just got a little easier, but is replacing a parent for an Ebook really a plus?
Like the paragraph above let’s talk about money. We said that the prices of the Ebook device are high but, what about the books themselves? According to some, “Usually one can see 10% to 30% price reductions for the ebook version” (Book Report). You can decide whether that saves you money or not. Another advantage to the Ebook is that publishers and vendors save money on printing and distribution costs (Book Report), sounds good for authors who are just now getting into the writing world (Wasshuber).
One of the bigger arguments is that the Ebook is environmentally sound. By converting all books and future books waiting to be written into this format will save extreme amounts of paper and will cut paper production down tremendously. Finally, and not as importantly we would all like to have a nifty little computer like device that houses all of our text and books in one place, it’s very convenient.
My opinion on Ebooks is this. To be honest, I don’t care Ebooks or no Ebooks. Society has gone on without them and will continue to go on with them. I will be honest and say that the only thing stopping me from getting an Ebook is $300. I think having a cool gadget like that would be helpful and convenient as a student but it’s no different than reading an actual paper book. I can’t say that I can literally pick a side between the two. Do Ebooks save paper? Yes. Are they expensive? Yes. Are they cool? Yes. Can it save lives? I don’t know, maybe one day it will be able to. I simply say this, Ebooks are a great tool to have and are a great convenience, but I’m perfectly fine without them.
Sources Cited
Book Report. "Ebooks: Friend or Foe?" Book Report 21.1 (2002): 50-53.
Academic Search Premier. Web. 8 Apr. 2010.
Chris Wasshuber. "Pros and Cons of Ebooks." Lybrary.com. Lybrary.com, 2010.
Web. 8 Apr. 2010.
<http://www.lybrary.com/free_ebooks/pros_and_cons_of_ebooks.pdf>.
Miles, Ginny. "The Pros and Cons of Buying E-Books." PC World 27.10 (2009):
34. Academic Search Premier. Web. 11 Apr. 2010.
