eBooks are gaining momentum.
eBooks are getting popular these days. And they have all rights to be for the number of reasons.
They are compact (you can bring a bookshelf worth of books with you on an average sized flash card), they could be read on a multitude of devices, be it a laptop, PDA, smartphone or specifically designed for that purpose hardware, such as Sony’s The Reader Digital Book. Some readers even allow for eBooks to be read aloud by a synthesized voice (which sounds not as good as those “books on tapes”, but still a viable alternative for a fellow commuter when you can’t wait till you get home to find out what happened to the main character in the next chapter. Please don’t “read and drive”, it’s tempting but very dangerous) .
New eBook stores are growing on the Net like mashrooms, and industry giants like Amazon.com invest in software and hardware, which is a good sign for the eBook business. Online stores offer downloadable books on any subject and by any author, from religion to science fiction and from James Rollins to Leo Tolstoy (can you imagine carying the ~1500 pages of War and Peace in your pocket with you on an airplane).
The guys at Project Gutenberg are busy transfering to electronic format books that are no longer under copyright protection in US. They have managed to digitize about 100,000 titles so far. The books are available free of charge.
An effort is made to create a universal XML-based standard called FictionBook that would be compatible with current and future devices and standards.
With a recent announcement of 4Tb (terabyte) hard drive the day is coming when you will be carying the Library of Congress in your pocket.
P.S. Links on the subject
Some eBook stores:
MobiPocket, christiancdrom.com, Sony Connect books, eBooks.com, eReader.com, FictionBook.ru, Manybooks.net.
Most popular eBook readers (software):
MobiPocket reader, Plucker, FictionBook format (fb2) readers.