Ebooks and ebook readers explained

It’s hard to have missed the hype about Apple’s iPad. Many people have been talking about how it can be used to read books and newspapers, but it’s far from the first way of accessing books electronically.

There are already plenty of online stores that sell electronic versions of the best-selling books and many different ebook readers (the slim, paperback-sized gadgets that are used to view them).

In this issue we’ll explain all you need to know about electronic books, or ebooks, including their pros and cons, where to get them and how to use them.

Small, light, powerful
When you read a book you might be in bed, on a beach, on the train – just about anywhere. Now think about reading on the computer. It’s hardly going to be straightforward reading a novel on a laptop balanced on your knees, is it? Especially if you have to plug it in to charge it up every couple of hours.

So, for ebooks to be more appealing, they need to be more like books. That means small, easy to carry around, simple to use and able to last for hours without needing to be plugged in.

And that, in a nutshell, is what an ebook reader aims to be. It’s the missing link that turns what we had already (a load of words in a computer file) into something that’s much closer to what most people would recognise as a book.

At heart, an ebook reader is a small computer, with a screen that is about the same size as a paperback, with storage space to hold the files that make up books and buttons that enable you to move from page to page.

If that’s all they did, of course, you would be entitled to wonder what the fuss is about. But potentially, electronic books and readers can do much more.

For a start, there is no fumbling for a bookmark or turning down the corner of a page as the reader can remember where you left off. And when there are fo otnotes or references you can usually tap the screen, or press a button to jump to the note, then back to the rest of the text. Some readers also include a dictionary so you can look up any word you like, and a keypad or touchscreen for annotations or searching.

As ebook files are very small in size ebook readers can use memory for storage rather than a hard disk, with enough capacity to store hundreds of books at a time if you like. You can also create as many bookmarks as you want, which is great for finding key passages in a book later.

Reading matter
Publishers and retailers now provide the bulk of their catalogues in ebook form, so there is always plenty to choose from, although your choice can be limited by the type of reader you have. Best of all, some books are available free of charge. Head to Waterstones.com, for example, and click the ebooks link and you will find plenty of best-sellers, both fiction and non-fiction. There are also reference books available from top publishers such as O’Reilly.

Most ebook readers are black and white but you will still find some comics and illustrated books available and the colour screen on Apple’s new iPad may attract more magazine material too, with the possibility of video and colour photos on the page of an article.

Meanwhile, you are not necessarily limited to documents that are published as ebooks. For example, the excellent, free Calibre Ebook program has a set of ‘recipes’ that allow it to grab all the news stories from your favourite website, convert them into an ebook and then transfer it to your reader. Just plug it in each morning, click a couple of buttons and you will have a customised newspaper to read on the way to work.