Advantages of e-books over printed books

Electronic books or e-books are created by converting the traditional printed books into an electronic format which enables it to be made available on tablets and other electronic devices. Now, are e-books necessarily better than traditional books? Let us look at some of the advantages that electronic textbooks have over their printed counterparts.

1) Portability: Electronic books are portable when compared to traditional books. Carrying a 1000-page book around may prove to be cumbersome, but the same book, when converted to electronic format may not take up more that 2-3 MB of space on your device. Consequently, hundreds of books can be stored on a single device and this is extremely efficient and useful.

2) Nature-friendly: Since e-books do not involve the use of paper, it can be said that it is more environment-friendly than a printed book. Therefore, these are cheaper too than printed books.

3) Useful features: Most e-reader applications have a search option which is a useful feature and allows us to search through the entire book. It also allow users to bookmark important pages for future reference and write and save notes pertaining to particular parts of the book. Some e-book applications are also linked to a dictionary which provides us with accurate meanings and pronunciations of unfamiliar words.

4) Convenient: Some e-book applications have additional features like adjustable font sizes and read-aloud features. Adjustable font sizes make it easier for people with poor eyesight to read better, while the read-aloud feature is a boon for the visually-challenged people or it can be used when one is simply too tired to read.

5) Availability: There are thousands of free e-books available and it is easily available to the general public. E-books can be shared quite easily. There can be multiple users of a single e-book. There are websites like www.gutenberg.org/ which has over 45,000 e-books available for free. Their collection also includes classics from the 1800's which were rare, banned or unavailable.

Those were some advantages of e-books over traditional books. In spite of the many advantages, there is quite a mixed opinion on the topic as some people prefer to have a hard-bound printed copy of a book in hand when they read, while others prefer an e-book reader and its conveniences. However, we can safely say that as times move forward, the number of books released in electronic format would be much higher than printed books.

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