Most people today, don't know the difference between a digital
book and an ebook. In fact, many people think they are one and the same.
They couldn't be farther from the truth. They are entirely different
species of the same animal.
Digital books
Digital
books, sometimes also called electronic books or PDF books, are scanned,
digital facsimiles of standard printed, published books. You can think
of them as enhanced copies of the actual hard or paperback books we have
come to know and love.
When we are talking about the digital
version of newer publications, they are pretty much identical to the
original. When talking about old or even ancient publication, they are
much better than any original you would find on the shelf of your local
library. Since they are facsimiles of the original printing, this really
increases quality and helps overcome the problems of many older books,
such as yellowed pages, stains, see-through or onion skin type paper,
colored paper, brown inks, etc. These are scanned pages, not 'copied'
pages, and the quality of print truly represents a better quality than
the print of the original book.
The great majority of digital
books come in PDF format, though Amazon offers a Kindle edition,
Mobipocket offers the MOBI version, then there is the plain TEXT format,
as well as many others.
Digital books are usually far less
expensive than their hard or paperback counterparts, and there are
hardly ever shipping costs, unless they are delivered on a CD (Compact
Disk).
Ebooks
Ebooks are digital books too, but they
were designed and written for the internet. Many, if not most ebooks
were never officially "published" at all, unless you count posting
something on the internet as publishing.
Most ebooks were meant to
be written quickly, with little or no expenses except for possibly
distribution. The majority are short, almost always less than 100 pages,
usually under 50 pages. Some ebooks are literally slapped together in a
matter of hours. Often they are little more than several short reports
combined together.
Many ebooks are self-help books, or manuals of
some kind, though there are some eBook works of history and fiction to
be found if you look for them. More often than not, they have little or
no literary value, their intentions being the distribution of facts,
instructions and/or ideas.
Sometimes you may come across the eBook
version of a hard or soft cover book. It will even be called the "ebook
version" of whatever book. But if you look closer, you will find that
this eBook version is almost always far fewer pages than the original.
You may as well call the "ebook version" the "condensed version" of the
book.
Though you will find many ebooks in PDF format, much like
digital books, but many come as various generic interactive
applications. But don't let the initial attraction of interaction fool
you. Even if this sounds like high tech education at first, you will
find that there is not much to the promise of interaction. It just
disguises the fact that these books are short, technically no more than a
few pages, with little to no real practical, and even less academic
value.
Last but not least, ebooks are often free or cheap, though
you will occasionally find some specialty instruction "programs" costing
hundred of dollars.
Conclusion
Technically, ebooks
are digital books, though practically there is a big difference.
Personally, I usually prefer a digital book to its eBook cousin.
By Thomas A. Retterbush
After a long, hard walk on the wild side, I've finally become a
legal, honest, successful citizen and social media geek, living in SA,
Texas. I have dedicated my life to proving, that success of one's hopes
and dreams are possible no matter how far you have fallen, how low
you've sunken or what rock you've crawled out from u. If you read my
story on the first page of my Digital Book Supersite, at , you will realize that, if I can do it, ANYBODY can.
