All new. Every word on every line. Every font. Exact layout.
These are the promises made by an online seller on Facebook who is advertising electronic books, or e-books.
Technology is indeed growing as we speak. Things that are traditional are now being made virtually obsolete replaced by digital ones.
E-books are digital copies of books, usually in Portable Document Format (PDF), which allows the owner to view and read the book on his own computer, or any electronic devices that allow it.
YOUNG E-NTREPRENEUR
Kathleen Calvara, 15 years-old, is one of the young people who goes for e-books. She has a really huge e-book library, 1,800 e-books more or less, she says.
Kathleen is the person behind the BdEdz’s Önline E-book Shop, an e-book seller in Facebook, which sells copies of e-books at around R10 per title and are paid via E-Load, Pasaload, Paypal, or Gcash.
“I was getting bored during summer so I decided to put up this business rather than spend my time going out, wasting time and money,” Calvara says.
Calvara mostly buys her e-books from websites such as Amazon.com. She also trades occasionally with other e-book sellers on the Internet. These, in turn, are the e-books that she sells on her Facebook account.
Her online bookshop provides a wide selection of titles, among them the Harry Potter series, Twilight series, Anne Rice novels, etc. The e-books are sent to the customers via email, and for bulk orders, the e-books are burned into a CD and shipped through a courier.
Calvara has been an e-book reader for about two years. She tried them out of curiosity, surfing the Internet most of the time, until she came across a person who sells e-books on a shopping website. After trying it, she started regularly buying the digital books.
“E-books are way better than real books because not only do they save you money, they are very portable as you can carry hundreds of e-books in just one device,” she says.
DOMINATION!
Giordani “Dan” Gaffud, one of the founders of the Bookay-Ukay bookshop, thinks that e-books will dominate the book industry – but definitely not in the near future.
“Not that fast, not in the near future. A lot of people still love to read and treasure real books, a lot of people even love to collect hard-to-finds, first editions, and signed copies. But it will surely have its place in the industry soon,” he predicts.
Gaffud believes that it is a matter of a person’s perception as to which is better between real books and the digital ones. Both have their own unique identities and it will really depend on the person which he would prefer.
“As for me, I still prefer real books because I want to keep copies of the books I’ve read, maybe because of the book cover, or maybe because of its format. Also, if it was given to me by a friend, it has a sentimental value for me,’’ Gaffud adds.
Bookay-Ukay is a bookshop that promotes reading and makes the hobby more accessible to a lot of people by selling books at a lower price. But Gaffud says selling e-books in their shop is not at all impossible.
“We haven’t tried selling e-books but for me, there is no problem in doing so. We are not advocates of reading ‘only’ real books. Our shop promotes enjoyment in reading and we would love to see people reading or absorbing what’s inside of a book in any way possible,” he says.
E-books are cool, Gaffud adds, especially when one cannot find a copy of a rare book. “A Filipino may or may not prefer e-books. If one wants to read books, he may not necessarily put them in a shelf and have a collection, he may choose reading an e-book rather than buying a real one,” he states.
EYE-FRIENDLY
Most people are cold to the concept of e-books because of the fact that they have to be read on monitors of PCs or other electronic devices, sometimes straining the eyes. Gaffud, who occasionally gets e-books from the Internet, finds it difficult to read them.
“It’s quite hard for me to read on the LCD of a computer. After an hour or two, it already hurts the eye. E-books are good when you have e-book readers,” Dan shares.
Even Calvara experiences a hard time when reading these e-books.
“Actually, it does strain my eyes. I even got sick one time because of these e-books as I was sitting in front of the monitor, reading 24/7. But we just need to schedule our time and use protective screens for our PCs to avoid it,” Calvara advises.
Eye-straining or not, these e-books are certainly something worth watching out for in the book industry. They definitely give a new dimension to the usual reading experience. But people should be reminded that it is not the format that is important but the lessons that are unraveled on every flip, or on every click on the pages of the books.
“E-books, like real books, are just containers. What matters is the content,” Gaffud ends.
This is an article written by IVAN ANYAYAHAN. A writer for Manila Bulletin. This article, published today, features my cousin, KATHLEEN CALVARA.
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