An ebookreader lets you read books that simply exist as electronic files, so you can store many of them on the device at once, saving space, weight, and even money. Typically the screen uses electronic paper, or e-paper, to display text successfully even in strong light and daylight. New features on ebooks in 2012 are turning then into a standalone multimedia library, with offerings from Nokia, Apple, Google, Amazon, and the Barnes and Noble bookshop with their Nook reader in collaboration with Microsoft.
Disadvantages include dependence on power supplies, risk of water damage, restricted file formats, not being able to lend your books on to others or resell them, and a loss of privacy and freedom when books can no longer be obtained anonymously. There is also a risk that texts could be remotely edited or deleted entirely, leading to the sort of rewriting of history that took place in the former Soviet Union and in George Orwell’s far-sighted novel 1984. Amazon in fact at one point deleted that very book from their own popular ebookreader, the Kindle.
Authors may receive less royalties from ebook sales, but ebooks actually open the market for self-publishing as well as publishing books of lengths previously thought to be too long, or even too short. There is some question as to whether there has been price fixing by the large players in this field, though setting minimum prices would probably benefit authors, whereas a free-fall in ebook prices would probably be preferable to Amazon.
Sellers of ebookreaders can afford to sell them cheap if they expect to make a profit on the ebooks they then sell to the owner, so big booksellers have every reason to sell affordable devices. If the device can only handle certaine ebook file formats, then the consumer is locked into getting their ebooks from just that supplier. Unless of course they go out and buy another ebookreader to get variety or have a spare one for a second home, or for reading they prefer to review in private.
