Stephen King has made the news recently with his electronic book (e-book) experiments: first, his release of RIDING THE BULLET, a short story that sold more than four hundred thousand copies in one day, and now the release of his novel THE PLANT in e-format from his website. Despite this, most people aren’t even aware that electronic books exist. So, what *are* e-books? Simply put, e-books are books without the paper. They come in fiction and nonfiction, genre and non-genre, big and small and everywhere in between. But how, pray tell, do you *read* them if they don’t use paper? There are a number of different ways:
*On your computer or laptop Many e-books are available in a variety of file formats- HTML for reading on Internet Explorer or Netscape, PDF for reading on Adobe Acrobat, RTF for reading on any word processing software, TXT (plain text) for reading on many different software programs.
*On your Palm Pilot You’ll need to install e-book reading software on your Palm Pilot in order to read e-books. One such program is Mobibook, available for free download at: http://www.mobipocket.com Once you install the software, you are able to read electronic books in PRC file format.
*On your E-reading Device Rocket e-book http://www.nuvomedia.com and Softbook http://www.softbook.com are two of the new e-book reading devices already on the market. Download e-books off the Internet and read on these handy, portable, backlit devices.
*On paper If reading on a computer or other electronic device isn’t your cup of tea, you can always print them out.
Why should you care about e-books? For a number of reasons, not the least being that e-books are generally much cheaper than print books–ranging in price from $3.50 on up. E-books are kind to the environment (unless, of course, you do decide to print them out!). Lastly, and possibly most importantly, e-books offer new and original authors and stories, as well as many old favorites.
Electronic publishing is an emerging industry. You’ll find electronic books available at large websites like Barnes and Noble, Powells.com, Amazon.com and directly from electronic publishers such as XC Publishing (http://www.xcpublishing.com), Word Wrangler (http://www.wordwrangler.com), Dark Star Publications (http://www.darkstarpublication.com), Hard Shell Word Factory, (http://www.hardshell.com) Book Locker (http://www.booklocker.com) and many more. E-books are available by download on the Internet, on CD or diskette. In addition, there are thousands of FREE e-books available online at websites such as: Project Gutenberg http://www.gutenberg.net.
For further information about e-books, check out these websites: *eBooknet http://www.ebooknet.com *ePublishing Connectionshttp://www.epublishingconnections.com
Don’t wait–hop aboard the e-book bandwagon today!
Xina Marie Uhl
Xina Marie Uhl is the author of the newly released electronic book NECROPOLIS, a fantasy adventure, and is the ‘X’ part of the new electronic publishing company XC Publishing. Check out their website at: http://www.xcpublishing.com
Copyright© 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002 Xina Marie Uhl, sffworld.com. All rights reserved. No part of this may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the author.
