The Ebook Experience
Over the past several months, there’s been fierce debate raging over what, exactly, ebooks mean to the present and future of publishing. Publishers of traditional, paper-based books are finding it no longer optional to address a growing demand for their content in digital form. Arising from that discussion is the need for people to determine just how we want to view an ebook.
For some, an ebook is simply a different means of content delivery. They will enjoy the latest bestseller or their favorite author’s latest story in either digital or print form–it’s all the same to them. They want the story, and they want it when they want it. For others, an ebook is an opportunity to make changes in the process of publishing–for them, time spent hunting down out of print backlists of favorite authors, or missed books in a series, or even classics from the next fifteen-year overnight sensation, is only a process they engage in because it’s currently the only way to find that awesome book from 1994 whose title you can’t remember. These readers question why the access to the content requires an expiration date when it no longer requires a physical manufacturing process. And for still another group of readers, an ebook is an opportunity to change the way we experience a story.
No one is sure yet which of these groups has the closest guess to right as to what the future holds. But it would be crazy not to at least try to imagine what could be.
We still see ebooks through the reference lens of print books. But what if it doesn’t have to be that way? What ways could the benefits of instant online gratification find a way to enhance our reading experiences? What makes an ebook a unique experience, and what could make reading an ebook not simply different from reading a paperback or a hardback book, but better?
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