As mankinds thought evovles better technologies are birthed. So has the book from humble beginnings written on stone tablets to papyrus fit together for codex books. The evolution of books as time has past is now the e-book. Just a responsible look at historical data shows how the uniformity of books have changed.
Robert Darton states in his book The Case For Books:
Somewhere, around 4000 BC, humans learned
to write...hieroglpyhs...about3200BC, alphabetical
writing to 1000 BC.According to scholars like
Jack Goody, writing was the most important technological
breakthrough in history humanity. It transformed mankind's
relation to past and opened a way for the emergence of the
book as a force in history (pp.21,22).
From the first manner of writings stems the technological past of books. Each era has made jumps to keep writ Holy or otherwise more stable and to have a longer life. E-books has brought about the continuity of technological change for original books to make them more appealing. With e-books there is no crumbling such as with clay tablets and quick aging as with papyrus an earlier scrolls types of writings. E-books not only is the evolved book but has a certain appeal.
Humans gravitate toward new technology overtime. The same with e-books the attractiveness of e-books came about like a late blooming teen. Though the industry of publishing has been peddling e-books for years, but they have just gained popularity with the masses. The industry has shown tremendous growth in e-sales yearly in just about every segment of the business. The late move on e-books has been because publishers have been skeptical of the e-future and holding on to the costly past of p-books Jason Epstein describes in article The New York Review of Books. This somewhat fear has kept publishers from forging through the e-publishing landscape and charting new territory of what is the beauty of e-pub.
The handsomeness in e-publishing is warehousing of books does not exist, which can become a problem when determining the life of book. The portability of the book is paramount especially if a publisher wants to sale to foreign market. A publisher can easily put their book in XML and various other e-formats and send off. For the consumer they can carry thousands of books in e-reader instead of having a few p-copies of books of interest. Publishers can take books already in backlist in transform them into e-books to little or no cost. There are various ways to sale e-books (i.e. chapters, bundled with print, and pages). Last but not least, every publishers dream e-books are sold on a no return basis. These are some reseasons of what make e-books grand to publishers and the industry. Get ready for endless possiblities and bask in the splendor of the new publishing industry. Lead by a format that may be a bit broken, but seems not to die because of where existence dwells.
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