e-books are becoming more and more popular. They are convenient, green, and have the same impact that paper books have as far as the content is concerned. Even so, many people don't understand their true value. Let's dispel the myths.
Myths come about because of ignorance. Some of the more popular myths will be discussed here and hopefully, you will start to appreciate the value and usefulness of e-books after the myths have been dispelled.
- There are not a lot of e-books available online: There are over a million e-books that are available without any cost at all. They are available through many websites, such as Feedbooks, Manybooks.net, Google Book Search and Internet Archive. There are also millions of other e-books that are available for purchase on any topic that you can think of or want.
- You need a special electronic device to be able to read an e-book: This is totally false. You can read e-books on your desktop or laptop computer and you can read them through the Internet or on a mobile device. In other words, you can read e-books on any device that you have access to.
- Buying e-books is not any greener than buying paper books: What a ridiculous concept. Of course e-books are greener for the environment than paper books. e-books don't fill up landfills, they save energy, costs for transportation, and reduce pollution that is connected to driving and flying books throughout the United States and the rest of the world. With paper books, if there are copies that are not sold, they need to be stored somewhere or shredded. That is not the case with e-books. So many trees are saved by not using paper.
- e-books have a short lifespan: False. You can store your e-books indefinitely. In fact, you have a greater chance of destroying your paper books than you do of destroying your e-books. e-books can't be burned, they can't crumble, rot, fall apart, mildew or age. They can go on forever and many people can enjoy them.
- If you publish an e-book, it has a good chance of being stolen: You have exactly the same chance of getting your e-book stolen as getting your paper book stolen. The risk is identical.
- If your book isn't good enough to be published as a paper book, it can be published as an e-book: This is absolutely a myth. Publishing your book as an e-book is just another method of publishing. It is by no means an inferior method of publishing. In fact, there are many publishing companies that are publishing both forms (paper and electronic). There are other publishing companies that have converted to only publishing electronic books. Also, many authors are choosing to self-publish their work as e-books. This has absolutely nothing to do with the quality of the writing. It is just that the authors don't see any great advantage to publishing paper books and they don't want to get such a small percentage of the money from the sales of their books.
- e-books are a thing of the future: Even though e-book publishing is much newer than paper book publishing, the sales from e-books have made a great deal of money in a very short amount of time. Even though the e-book sales are a small percentage of the entire publishing industry, the gap is getting smaller and smaller.
- People will never agree to pay more than a few cents for an e-book: Not true. If people are interested and enticed by the subject of the e-book, they will be willing to pay for it. Because your ability to market your e-book online allows you to reach a large number of people for very little cost, you can make a much higher profit on what you are selling.
e-books are here to stay. It makes a great deal of sense for e-books to be available to the general public considering how much technology has contributed to everyone's life and how many people are taking full advantage of that technology. e-books are another important part of that revolution. Having e-books at our fingertips does not mean that paper books have become any less valuable than they always were. They just use a different method of communication.