|
Book Home  Books Information ebook
ebook
An ebook is an electronic (or digital) version of a
book. The term is used ambiguously to refer to either an individual
work in a digital format, or a hardware device used to read books
in digital format. Some users deprecate the second meaning in favour
of the more precise "ebook device."
Though e-texts are available as digitally encoded books
and the term is often used synonymously with the term ebook, that
usage is deprecated. The term e-text is used for the more limited
case of data in ASCII text format, while the more general e-book can
be in a specialized (and, at times, proprietary) file format. An exception
to this rule is the academic e-text, which commonly includes components
such as facsimile images, apparatus criticus, and scholarly commentary
on the work from one or more editors specially qualified to edit the
author or work in question.
An ebook is commonly bundled by a publisher for distribution
(as an ebook, an ezine, or a internet newspaper), whereas e-text is
distributed in ASCII (or plain text), or in the case of academic works,
in the form of discrete media such as compact discs. Metadata relating
to the text are sometimes included with etext (though it appears more
frequently with ebooks). Metadata commonly include details about author,
title, publisher, and copyright date; less common are details regarding
language, genre, relevant copyright conventions, etc.
|
|
