Alan Broker and Loren Teague are authors who have a book come out soon. You probably won’t find their titles on the shelves of your local bookshop. Their fiction is published in computerized, digital bits(二进制数据格式). They are authors publishing e-books.
E-mail,e-commerce,e-authors,er-books. . . eeeargh (发出的感叹声)The technology has influenced us in many ways. Surely not books? Physical books are a touchable, visual experience. There’s nothing like the expectation of a new book in your hands, the attraction of a cover, and the smell of ink and paper. You can curl up in an armchair, or in bed, with a good book. But certainly it will not be the same with a small electronic plan, even if it is the size and the weight of a paper book, and has a simple button that turns the page.
Even if you like the idea, you first have to have a handheld electronic readers with high resolution (清晰度) screen, the ability to store several books at once, and a page by page text display. You can download e-books from various US web sites, but unless you have the small reading plans, that means reading books on a large computer screen, and that obviously isn’t suitable for a late-night reading experience in bed.
But a lot of companies are moving in for e-publishing. Computer giant Microsoft and leading US bookshop chain Barnes and boble Com now plan to create a giant e-book store. Microsoft is also leading a push to standardized formats(版式)for online books to allow them to be downloaded to any computer.
With the kind of heavy weights now backing e-publishing, it’s a matter of when,not,if, the phenomenon rolls into town. Does it mean the death of books as we know them? What happens when electronic readers are as cheap as dirt, or when companies give them away to help to increase the selling? Would you rather pack a box of discs next time you move to a new house, instead of seeming endless boxes of books? There is still a romance to books that it’s hard to see their electronic cousins replacing.
“I don’t think we’ve reached anything like the version of e-books that will probably come about within a year”, says Wilson, managing director of Harvard Press. “And I don’t see the actual physical book disappearing. But I do see the future of downloading a book of some kind. It’s certain to happen.”
In the way that horses remained after the advent of the car, books won’t disappear entirely for books lovers They will simply become a new form of amusement.