Frankfurt (dpa) – Get ready, booklovers: a revolution in how books are sold and read is just a few pages away.
Over the past five years, many printed works – from entire encyclopedias to Goethe’s complete works – have to made their way onto CD-ROM. Now, the book itself appears poised to become electronic.
Instead of being printed on pages sandwiched in-between two cardboard covers, literature in the future will most likely be saved on digital readers. And those who read books, in the future, will peer not at yellowing paper pages but look at high-resolution flat displays.
Today’s electronic books are called e-books – a monikor that distinguished them from traditional, paper-bound volumes. Eugen Emmerling, spokesman of the Association of German Booksellers in Frankfurt, expects a permanent shift toward electronic publishing in the industry.
“We are facing the biggest changes since Gutenberg’s days,” he said, referring to the German inventor Johann Gutenberg who created the system of printing using moveable metal type in the mid-1400s.
Among scientific journals, digital publishing has made great strides. And more types of digital publishing ventures are expected to follow.
“Everything that doesn’t need to be read from A to Z will work great as a digital text,” says Emmerling. That includes encyclopedias. Or a scientist who travels to a meeting to give a presentation could take many books stored in a single device, as opposed to having to bring dozens of texts.
But Emmerling sees a less propitious future for the e-book in the literary arena. He believes that a book is more than a medium for text: “A book is also a possession,” Emmerling argues.
“Books can have a certain scent, they be used as decoration, and their layout can be pleasant.” All these attributes are lost if texts are downloaded from the Internet and transferred to a machine for reading.
The dearth of titles available in digital format is another shortcoming of electronic literature. Dieter E. Zimmer points this out in his book, “The Library of the Future: Text and Writing in the Age of the Internet”.
He states that, contrary to expectations, relatively few digital books are currently available. “Most freely available texts on the Internet are the result of idealists making them available using their spare time.”
About half a dozen reading devices are available, though. One is the Rocket eBook, made by the U.S.-based NuvoMedia. The Rocket eBook can store approximately 45 books, corresponding to about 18,000 pages of text. Bookmarks can be inserted, and the texts are searchable. The eBook also comes with an integrated dictionary.
But a digital book for the Rocket eBook can only be read on the specific eBook it was ordered for. Thus texts can only be passed on together with the actual eBook on which they are loaded. Gerd Ribbeck, spokesperson with NuvoMedia, explains that this type of encryption is demanded by publishers.
When buying a digital book, customers have the right to download it again free of charge at www.rocket-ebook.com, http://www.rocket- ebook.com, in the event that the book is accidentally deleted.
“The site registers all books that a user has purchased,” Ribbeck explains. Approximately 8,000 books are available for the eBook. Prices are comparable to prices for actual books.
Hand-held computers equipped with special software can also be used to read digital texts. However, the display of these small computers would probably be too small for longer reading sessions.
The involvement of Microsoft highlighted the importance attached to the concept of the digital book. This past spring, Microsoft convinced 30 publishers to make 800 titles available digitally, in time for the release of the Microsoft Reader software.
And Stephen King has proven that literature need not be in traditional book format to be sold. According to King’s Web site, the novel “The Plant” was downloaded more than 150,000 times during the first week after publication. The text can be read without special reading software – one must simply print it after it is downloaded.
