PBEY3102

Early e-books were generally written for specialty areas and a limited audience, meant to be read only by small and devoted interest groups. The scope of the subject matter of these e-books included technical manuals for hardware, manufacturing techniques, and other subjects.

Numerous e-book formats emerged and proliferated, some supported by major software companies such as Adobe's PDF format, and others supported by independent and open-source programmers. Multiple readers naturally followed multiple formats, most of them specializing in only one format, and thereby fragmenting the e-book market even more. Due to exclusiveness and limited readerships of e-books, the fractured market of independents and specialty authors lacked consensus regarding a standard for packaging and selling e-books. E-books continued to gain in their own underground markets. Many e-book publishers began distributing books that were in the public domain. At the same time, authors with books that were not accepted by publishers offered their works online so they could be seen by others. Unofficial (and occasionally unauthorized) catalogs of books became available over the web, and sites devoted to e-books began disseminating information about e-books to the public.

The e-book has several advantages over physical materials:

• Text can be searched automatically and cross-referenced using hyperlinks, making the e-book format ideal for works that benefit from such functions.
• Less physical space is required to store e-books, and hundreds to thousands of books may be stored on the same device
• Because they require little space, e-books can be offered indefinitely, with no going out of print date, allowing authors to continue to earn royalties indefinitely.
• Readers who have difficulty reading printed books can benefit from the adjustment of text size and font face.
• Text-to-speech software can be used to convert e-books to audio books automatically.
• E-book devices allow reading in low light or even total darkness by means of a back light.
• An e-book may be more comfortable for some to hold because it need not be held open like a physical book and can also be set down and read without needing to be held.
• It costs little to reproduce or copy an e-book, which is ideal for archival and backup purposes.
• Ease of distributing e-texts means that they can be used to stimulate higher sales of printed copies of books.^[2]
• E-books can often be purchased from reading devices themselves and do not require one to visit a bookstore to obtain.
• Although they require electricity to be read, the production of e-books does not consume the paper, ink, and other resources that are used to produce print books.

• Some e-book requires the purchase of an electronic device and/or peripheral software to display.
• As an e-book is dependent on equipment to be read, it can be affected by faults in external hardware or software, such as hard disk drive failure.
• All e-book devices require electrical power.
• Certain e-book formats may become obsolete and incompatible with future devices.
• eBook readers are more likely to be stolen than paper books.^{[citation needed]}
• eBook readers are more fragile than paper books and more susceptible to physical damage.
• If an e-book device is stolen, lost, or broken beyond repair, all e-books stored on the device may be lost (this can be avoided by backup either on another device or by the e-book provider).
• Screen resolution of reading devices may be lower than actual paper.^[3]
• E-books can be hacked, or disseminated without approval from the author or publisher, through the use of hardware or software mods.
• There is a loss of tactility and aesthetics of book-bindings.