Are Ebooks better than Printed Books?
Ebooks are rapidly evolving. They not only defy time being ageless but are also cost-efficient and user-friendly.
Written By: Hitesh Gupta
In today’s world where everything is getting concise, I feel it is time for books to do the same. Yes, it’s right, these are called e-Books. Today millions of books are at your fingertips, which can be easily accessed with just a click. There is no longer a need to carry bulky books, as the same is available on mobile phones, laptops, tablets, and so on. Special gadgets, such as the Kindle, iPad’ etc.; which are specific for reading, enhance the user experience of reading a book. Due to numerous advantages and features of eBooks, it has an edge over traditional paper books.
Advantages of E-books
One of the most significant advantages of ebooks is their low cost. Where a single paper book could cost easily between 300-400 rupees, we can easily get the same book for around 40-50 rupees, if not for free. We don’t have to limit ourselves to the books that are only available in bookstores when we can have a global reach to a wide range of books, thanks to ebooks. These ebooks provide many user-friendly features such as hyperlinks to facilitate searches for additional information or if we are not in the mood of reading, we can even listen to ebooks with the help of additional features. One doesn’t have to carry numerous books for reading on the journey; as they all can now be stored online on cloud networks making them portable and handy.
Also, we see that many authors struggle to get their work published as no publishing house is willing to publish it. But with the help of eBooks, they can directly publish their work on digital platforms. Not only authors but also various Publishing houses have also used this to publish works of authors reduce their cost of publication and earn greater Revenues. Many small publishers can compete with large media houses as the production of ebooks is relatively cheaper.
Ebooks help us save a lot of space as we don’t have to worry about a shortage of space to store our large number of books in our house. Today ebooks come with a lot of advanced features; like an inbuilt dictionary to enable the reader to find the meaning of difficult words easily.
Environmental Benefits
Other than the user benefits it also has environmental benefits. To begin with; to manufacture one paper book an average of 7.5 kg of CO2 is released into the environment. Whereas reading around 22- 23 ebooks offset the CO2 emission. Which helps the manufacture of these reading devices to reduce Carbon Footprints. Ebooks have also helped to save trees as it requires 24 Trees to manufacture 1 Ton of paper. As per recent reports, every year nearly 125 million trees are cut down to produce paper. By switching over to ebooks we can save all those trees from being cut down.
Another important advantage of E-books is that they have helped to preserve a huge number of historically important books which are deteriorating due to the passage of time. Ebooks are ageless, they do not burn, go mouldy, become brittle, decay, or fall apart. With ebooks, we can ensure that literature is preserved.
Ebook readers have gradually increased over the years, but the Covid 19 pandemic has been a catalyst in the expansion of ebooks. Due to the scarcity of books during the pandemic, the selling of ebooks has skyrocketed. According to surveys, the sale of ebooks has more than doubled, becoming a 16 billion dollars industry.
Ebooks are rapidly evolving. They not only defy time being ageless but are also cost-efficient and user-friendly. Keeping in mind the various advantages: Environmental, User, and others, that an E-book has over traditional paper books it can be rightly said that it’s the time to switch over to them.
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