What is an EBook?
An e-book is an electronic or digital version of a printed book and as such requires either a personal computer or eBook reader to be read. Often they come distributed as PDF files and can be read on a PC by a PDF reader available free from adobe - the owners of this format. EBook readers are less popular especially for IT related books as PDF files which are the main book format used by the like of Word Press , and O’reilly due to the fact that they do not fit on the screen although new devices like the iphone are quite excellent at displaying these.

Before deciding on buying an eBook you have to weigh up the pros and cons.

Advantages of EBooks

• EBooks are often much cheaper than their paper counterparts due to much lower distribution costs.
• Therefore they are much more environmentally friendly
• Out of print books are easily obtained
• They can be easily and quickly added to and corrected
• Some open source publications are only available in electronic format
• Many are free
• They are readily available normally within seconds once you decide you need one
• EBooks are much less bulky than conventional books

Disadvantages

• You need a PC or other device to read them
• This requires electricity
• They well the device used to read them is much more prone to damage than a book
• EBooks suffer from a form of piracy e.g. it is easy to simply copy one and give to a friend