- Introduction
- e-Book Challenges
- The Value of e-Books
- The Future of e-Books
The Future of e-Books
I envision a future in which all e-books use one common, non-proprietary format—able to be displayed on any hardware device built for compliance. You can confidently purchase an e-book that can be read now, or 100 years from now. Instead of having multiple "readers" on your desktop, you’ll have one that you selected based on the merits of the e-book reader, not its content. Also, when you upgrade to a new computing device, you won’t have to buy the same book again for a different format. Books or articles squeezed into a little PDA screen, for example, will display just as well in full typographical detail on a 27-inch monitor.
While we await this e-book nirvana, those of us with an interest in owning and reading e-books should be urging publishers of software, hardware, and content to develop common, sharable standards that will simplify and improve the e-book industry for everyone.