E-Books - Advent Of E-book Technology, Supply And Demand Problems, New Trends Within The E-book Industry

An electronic book, or e-book, is a book that is accessed electronically via a personal computer (PC), a specially designed e-book reader, or a handheld device like a Palm Pilot. In most cases, users download the text from an Internet site after paying with a credit card. Depending on the technology used, e-book purchasers quite often have the capability to highlight, bookmark, and annotate specific passages, as well as the ability to search an entire document. Despite many bold predictions in the late 1990s that e-books would soon render paper publications obsolete, e-book sales remained weak in both 2000 and 2001 as three main issues—incompatible formats, difficult-to-use reading devices, and uncertainty surrounding copyright laws—continued to plague the industry by undercutting both supply and demand.