Pocket PC eBooks Watch - eBook and beyond  
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Reality Check
Working the web: ebooks
The paperless office may not have materialised, but the paperless book - or ebook - is now here, and with high-profile publishers now offering a serious range of ebooks, the traditional printed book has a serious challenge to its dominance.
Books have been placed on removable media such as floppy disk and distributed to readers for some years. The oldest producer of ebooks is Project Gutenberg, which began in 1971 by distributing books that were out of copyright on floppy disk.
Ebooks can be bought from online bookshops such as Amazon and WH Smith, both offering a large cross-section of subjects in the leading ebook formats. Prices are comparable to their paper equivalents. You buy your ebook by downloading not only the book itself, but also a key and licence to unlock the ebook so you can read it. Publishers can set the rights they offer on their ebooks, including whether you can make copies of the ebook and how much can be printed out.
You can also create your own ebooks; all the leading formats have software that allows you to do this. One of the most advanced and easiest to use is ReaderWorks. It's free for non-commercial use. Why not create your own personal travel guide from the paper books you have - or group all your favourite recipes together as one ebook you can easily access?
The ebook market is still very new and the fact that book buyers have three competing formats from which to choose doesn't help the market achieve a critical mass. That said, the ebook is here to stay and will find its own niche.

posted by Jerry permanent link