Book People Archive

RE: speaking e-book?

Men propose but the market disposes: eText vs. eBook for the files we read.

I have a set of bookmarks on my browser to publishers of books in digital
formats and websites devoted to discussing them. Out of about 20 sites, six
incorporate a name for their product in their site name. 5 call them
"ebooks," and one calls them "electronic books." None call them "etexts."
Those sites that represent a broad spectrum of materials on the subject,
such as ebookhome.com, also have a section on portable hardware to display
the texts. This is called alternatively "Reading Devices"; "Handheld ebook
readers," (various dedicated digital text readers), or "ebook Readers"
(software readers at Barnes & Noble).

Ebook web (http://www.ebookweb.org/basics/ebook.primer.htm) refers to the
text itself as the ebook and the means of reading it  as follows: "There are
three main ways to read an eBook: on a dedicated reading device such as
those manufactured by RCA; on a PDA or other multi-purpose device such as a
Palm handheld, the Franklin eBookman, or a PocketPC device; or on a desktop
or laptop PC using software from Microsoft, Adobe, or a variety of smaller
vendors."

I don't think "eText" has caught on in the larger world of e-publishing, and
while there was some effort to use the term "eBook" to mean the hardware
reader, I think that failed when the texts migrated to the Pocket PC and the
Palm, which cannot go by that name as they are not dedicated machines.
Ebooks today are the ding an sich.

Best,

Leslie Evans
Los Angeles



-----Original Message-----
From: Michael Hart [mailto:hart@[redacted]
Sent: Thursday, October 18, 2001 8:30 AM
To: The Book People
Subject: Re: [BP] speaking e-book?


As perhaps the person most credited with the invention of the word
"eText". . .I would have to say that what Ken Wilson described below
is an "eText" rather than an "eBook."

Quite simply, an "eText" is the file containing the words that make
up the book, sometimes along with various formatting instructions;
while an "eBook" is a physical object containing hardware, firmware,
and whatever software you install on it, including various "eTexts."