An eBook is a Book is a Book
This is in response to Todd Sattersten’s excellent post about the confused state of the Publishing industry with reference to eBooks.
To say that an eBook is or is not a book would be to diminish its qualities. An eBook can be more than just one simple thing. But the question with eBooks is not that of what it can do, because by its very nature, it is just a file. It is the app that displays it that decides what the file can do.
Stacey Madden is right about two things mentioned in the post - first of all, the difference is in the medium. eBooks allow authors to interact with users much more easily than normal books do, but only because of the platform they are read on. The simplest eBooks reader app will just display the text, but a polished platform like a Kindle will allow the user to bookmark, make notes and share them. It will record the passages people read the most or get confused most with. That way, the author gets more information about the reader and his habits. This might seem like gaming the system. Books till now have a hit or miss capability. A book really liked by the editors might not do so amazingly in sales. That’s just a bet that publishers have been making since decades. But now, eBook reading platforms allow a growing amount of information about what people prefer, thus allowing publishers to publish that.
This also brings me to my second point - Madden is right that eBooks are digitized compositions. An eBook can be updated more frequently, thus allowing an author to go from version 2 to 2.1, instead of the infamous “Third Edition” of books. The time between editions is long and arduous, with decreasing benefit for the author, unless there is something substantial to be added. The edition system works well for technical books where the changes in the field require major rewrites or addition of chapters. But for any other kind of book, a few changes here and there, simplifying text or correcting errors is possible easily only either in a reprint or in an eBook. That luxury is provided by eBooks.
I’d say eBooks are more than books, but I am an ardent fan of the touch and feel of a book as well as the side margin where I can take notes and have it attached to the book forever. Ebooks, while so much better at retaining thoughts and bookmarks, are slaves of the platforms they are read on, thus making them lesser than books in many ways. Yet, when you add up all the pros and cons, an eBook, is a Book.
