E-books: A New and Easier Way of Reading
Posted on November 4th, 2010 - No Comments »
There is a new medium for reading; e-books. E-books are books that are written in the form of digital media and are essentially an electronic form of a written book that can be read from a computer or hand held device. E-books have allowed people more freedom when it comes to reading. E-books are now sold and bought on the internet just as easily as they are traditionally bought in stores.
The History of the E-book
The first e-book was created in the 1970’s. Earlier e-books were made for a specific audience and in specialty subjects. Many e-books created in the late 1900’s were for technical manuals, manufacturing techniques or other specified subjects. E-books allowed individuals to not have to print all of their books and documents, but instead have them available in digital format. E-books picked up in popularity and started to appear on the web being downloaded and stored on a hard drive or storage disk. E-books then became increasingly popular after software, including Adobe PDF, was created which help enable the e-book format.
The first e-book reader was created in 1986; however, was only made up of an electronic dictionary. A few other e-book devices were created in the 1990’s, but it wasn’t until the 2000’s that the e-reader gained significant popularity. Major publishing companies started to take an interest in e-books around 2001, and now publishers have their own online e-book stores.
The Benefits of E-books
E-readers are a medium which allows users to read e-books at any time or any place, just like paper books. They have a great advantage to paper books as they are generally small, compact and lightweight, and can store hundreds of books in one handheld device. There are now millions of books available for purchase online at e-book retailers.
Other benefits of e-books on e-readers is that books can be translated into many different languages, they can be read in low lit area’s as the e-reader screens are lit and the production of e-books does not consume paper and ink. The initial cost of an e-reader can be an investment; however, you can save a lot of money when purchasing e-books as compared to its paper counterpart.
The Amazon Kindle
One of the most popular e-reader devices is the Amazon Kindle. It first came out on November 19, 2007 in the US and sold out that same day. Amazon then came out with a couple different versions of the Kindle, known as Kindle 2 and Kindle DX. Since its release in 2007, it is said that over three million Kindles have been sold.
Amazon.com continues to sell the Kindle on their website as well as on their international affiliates. Amazon continuously releases Amazon coupons for their customers which can be found here, on Coupon Gravy! For Canadian and UK customers, you can also find Amazon.ca coupons and Amazon.co.uk coupons here!
