By Philip Yiga | September 4, 2018

An e-book is a book converted to digital format for display on a computer screen or handheld device. In fact, eBooks are published in electronic form and not printed on paper. On the other hand, eBooks are becoming very popular today because of the increased use of electronic-devices like computers, Smartphones coupled with internet-connectivity and it’s for this reason that we are going to list for you some of the advantages and disadvantages of E-books today.

 

Advantages Of EBooks:

1. EBooks are very mobile: unlike traditional physical-books, eBooks can be easily accessed and carried anywhere on your smart-devices. In fact, you can carry an entire library in your pocket as long as your computer-device has enough storage space.

 

2. They are easy to store or backup: eBooks can also be easily stored on your computer-device, memory-card, and flash-disk or even online. This makes backing-up an entire library easy without worrying about physical damages like fire, floods and a lot more.

 

3. Save Physical Space: with eBooks, an entire physical-library is compacted into small disk-drive. This helps to save-up a lot of physical space and as storage-disks increase in size, you will never run out of space to store your library in your entire life.

 

4. EBooks are very convenient: Keeping an electronic-book takes up so little space and if you don’t want the eBook on your device then you can simply delete it. In fact, you can store a full library of eBooks on your smart-device so that you can move with them on a trip without even feeling the bulk of physical-books.

 

5. eBooks save time: Today, it’s very easy and quick to buy an eBook from different online-stores thus saving you a lot of time that you would have spent going to a physical bookstore in-order to select and then purchase a book.

 

6. eBooks’ save you a lot of money: with eBooks, there are no shipping and transportation cost like with physical-books. This actually help you save a lot of money that would have paid on shipping or buying gas to go to a physical book-store to make a purchase.

 

7. They are easy-to-use: Most eBooks are easy use because they feature similar settings and features which include; adjustment of the font-size and background-color, adding bookmarks and highlights, use of searchable and linkable text for jumping back-and-forth between chapters and a lot more. This will actually make it very easy for any person to browse through an eBook compared to a physical-book.

 

8. They are eco-friendly: eBooks don’t require physical raw-materials like trees and other chemicals to be created. This actually makes eBooks an eco-friendly option that reduces both cost and lowers environmental-impact.

 

9. They are very flexible: eBooks are more flexible than paper books because eBooks can read on any type of device and their fonts can be easily adjusted for people who prefer reading in a typical book-sized font.

 

10. They can exist in different media-formats: eBooks can contain multiple media-formats that don’t exist in traditional-books. For example, audio and video formats can be easily embedded into an eBook to make reading extremely easy and amazing.

 

11. They are very easy to update: with eBooks, when the author needs to update certain sections in it, he/she simply edits the electronic document and then saves the updated version before informing customers about a new release. This actually helps to save the author a lot time and money compared to updating physical-books.

 

Disadvantages Of EBooks:

1. Privacy issues: with eBooks, privacy is the number one problem for both publishers and authors. In fact, eBooks can be easily shared without making a purchase. On top of that, some readers can easily copy and paste the text from an eBook to another document and then share with friends or even place an eBook on a public-server for anyone to download which in-turn costs authors a lot of money.

 

2. They cause eye-strain issues with long use: eBooks are read on LCD-Screens which tend to produce glare that makes reading inconvenient if the lighting isn’t right and even cause eye-strains that make it even more difficult to focus when reading. Additionally, sitting for longer hours while reading an eBook can lead to other health issues in the long-run like backache, muscle-strain, increased cholesterol levels and a lot more.

 

3. Inconvenient to use if the smart-device batteries get low: Because eBooks are downloaded and read on smart-devices, they may at times be inconvenient to use especially if the smart-device loses battery-power and you need to recharge it to read again. In fact, this makes paper-books more convenient to use when travelling compared to eBooks. All in all, if you don’t have a computer-device then you won’t be able to access and read an eBook.

 

4. eBooks have an unreliable life span: eBooks can easily get lost in-case you’re smart-device crushes and gets stolen. However, this can be solved by backing-up a copy of your eBook on different storage platforms but if you don’t do so, then you can easily lose your eBook.

 

5. Some eBooks lack proper formatting: Although compatible eBook-formats have been introduced to allow users to read comfortably, most eBooks still lack proper formatting in-terms of improper page layouts and spacing which actually makes reading more tedious compared traditional paper-books.