What is happening e-books/magazines or multimedia books/magazines are getting popular and popular can be drawn out of a simple fact that the worldwide magazines/books sites are:
1. getting their websites in place if they are not present on internet
2. providing excerpts / complete books / magazines readable over internet or downloadable to read it with the special tools they provide on their sites called e-book reader.
3. you find newspapers, news channels, books selling sites (eBay), magazine sites over internet and get the contents faster. You open any magazine today published anywhere in the world or if you see the advertisement about a new book / latest edition of a magazine you will find its website address alongwith. And most of these sites offer you to download their own proprietary tools to read those downloaded books or otherwise a provision to read it over the internet.
Why e-book and book
1. printed version (hard copy) is always costlier and takes longer time to reach to you than the multimedia version available over the internet on their respective website.
2. excerpts of any new book can be found easily over the internet and hence you can decide whether to buy or not. The moment you pay for a e-version over the internet via e-payments, lo! You are ready to download it on the spot. No waiting, no missing copies.
3. battle is being over won by the e-version faster because of the cost factor, faster availability, more enjoyable experience, and your satisfaction of connecting with the latest technology.
4. multimedia version is better as it provides far more than texts and pictures by providing animation, video, music, speech and hyperlinks for contacting them there and then only.
5. most of these sites have to options for their readers – subscription offer or membership offer. In subscription offer you can subscribe for one of the publication of that company whereas with a one time membership you can browse through or download all their publications.
6. this way these companies carry out an online survey like how many persons logged in, what contents they spent most of their time. It helps them in arriving at faster conclusions of improving the contents by reading the behavior of the readers online.
7. advertisements have wider chances of hits online and they can be programmed in such a manner that they appear depending on the location/sex/preference/likings of the reader. Each reader reading the same book/magazine will have different set of advertisements. Moreover you have interactive ads which means you can reach to them instantly by clicking on their phone no., website, email.
8. readership breaks all demographic barriers. A book published over internet can find its readers anywhere in the world.
9. I badly wanted a last month copy of my newspaper but unfortunately I had sold all my “raddi” last week only. asked few of my friends about it – one was not taking that paper, second had also sold off, third one could locate it but did not find the page I wanted, fourth, fifth… and so on, and then clicked an idea, logged on the website of that newspaper, browsed through old issues, clicked on that date, and found the complete newspaper in front of me, and no pages missing!!
10. a strike in the city can stop newspaper / magazine coming to you but can’t stop e-paper coming to you via internet.
11. in my office internet is available on all desks, our librarian has downloaded the e-version of mostly required books (one copy each) and even a single popular book is available to multiple readers at the same time.
why book and not e-book
1. I am fed up sitting in front of my laptop and would prefer to sit on my sofa comfortably and read the printed version
2. I am traveling in a 10 hours flight and have the e-version of the book in my laptop but then I have to take extra batteries to carry on my reading during my travel else I just have to pick the hard version.
3. my office has the facility mentioned above (no. 11) but then many of the people want to take the book home and read it in a traditional manner. So librarian has to buy hard copies too of the popular books in demand so as to satisfy them.
A message to all those who have not tasted it if you have not read an e-book, go to any search engine, read an e-book, taste the thunder, build up your opinion on it and do share it.