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What are e-books?
E-books to be decoded are electronic books. E-books are fondly referred to as ‘ecobook’ too. So, e-books or electronic books are the digital equivalent of a conventional printed book. E-books are specialized type or versions of e-text. In a typical case, e-books are usually read on personal computers or on dedicated hardware support device called e-book readers or e-book devices.
When Michael Hart, in 1971, was given $100,000.00 worth computer time with Xerox sigma V mainframe computer, he thought that the greatest value created by the computers would not be the usual computing done by it rather it would be the storage, retrieval and searching for what was in our libraries. Michael hart went on working on his thought and thus came the first e-book. It was a copy of the ‘Declaration of Independence’. This mellow start later turned on as project Gutenberg. Gradually, the usage of e-books increased and the concept of e-books proliferated.
A publisher has many options available to pick up the best format for the e-books to be produced. However, an average end-user might simply want to read the content, the fact of the matter is that every format has its own pros and cons and the selecting of the format can be helpful in increasing the comfort level while reading or navigating through the pages of e-books. There are several formats available, like adobe acrobat reader’s .PDF format or word’s .doc format or other open source programs and so on. |