E-Books, Part 2: Short Nonfiction (How-To) E-Books
June 27, 2007 by Lillie
Table of contents for E-Books
- E-Books, Part 1: I read throughout a four-hour power outage
- E-Books, Part 2: Short Nonfiction (How-To) E-Books
- E-Books, Part 3: Books from Electronic or Traditional Publishers
- E-Books, Part 4: Electronic Reading Devices
For many people, the word e-book means a PDF or proprietary electronic (some type of .exe file) document that is usually a short how-to guide.
Often these e-books are offered free as a marketing tool for the author. Many of these e-books are useful: I recommend Mihaela Lica’s SEO Book of WordPress Blogs, and Yvonne at Grow Your Writing Business has a list of recommended e-books and advice on writing e-books.
However, a number of these free e-books are worth exactly what you pay for them, and downloading them is a waste of time. The one advantage may be to convince you not to pay for information from that “expert.”
At the other end of the spectrum are the e-books sold by gurus for exorbitant prices. While the information may be valuable and active links can make the e-book more useful than a print copy, most of these e-books are not designed for easy reading. Often they are encrypted to protect the copyright of the author, making it inconvenient for the reader. The e-book can only be read on a computer, and few people want to sit at the computer to read a book, especially when you can probably find similar information in a print book for far less money.
My personal philosophy on downloading how-to e-books is this:
- If the book is available only in a proprietary format that must be read on the computer, I don’t download it. I know it will too inconvenient for me to read.
- If the book is available only in encrypted PDF, I download it if it’s something I REALLY want to read. I keep a few encrypted PDF e-books on my desktop to read when I’m waiting for the computer to back up.
- If the book is available in unencrypted PDF and the subject or author interest me, I’ll download the file, convert it to another format, and import it to my e-book reader so I can read it comfortably.
- If the book costs significantly more than it would cost in print, I most likely will not download it.
That’s my take on nonfiction, how-to books written specifically as e-books, available in only one format, and published by an individual or company that is not in the publishing business.
What are your thoughts?
The next installment in this series will be about e-books from electronic and small press publishers.
Related Posts:
Read an E-Book Week
Self-Publishing Primer: Part 13 – Do I need a Web site - and should I make my book available as an e-book?
This is an interesting series Lillie. I steer well clear of the guru books. Anything that comes advertised in a high pressure sales page – typically with red and blue print, yellow highlighting and letters large enough to scream at you is on my “Do not pass go” list.
With the free books or inexpensively priced ebooks, I download and print them, then highlight and annotate. Then I go back and read them again on the screen – just the highlighted parts and also click on any links I’ve marked. I’d be interested to hear how others handle reading and getting the most out of an ebook.
I can’t read the whole book on the screen, but I have it there as a reference.
I look forward to the next post in this series.
I didn’t realize people printed out e-books, but Liz said she does the same thing. It’s strange that we look at everything from our own perspective. Since I don’t read print, I never thought about other people preferring it. Like you, I hope to hear how other people read e-books.
let me start by telling you how honored I feel to have my ebook mentioned as a recommended work by you, Lillie!
And now.. to the point: I rarely download ebooks – I prefer reading everything online (Google books is excellent for this). When it’s impossible to read online, then yes, I download – sites I trust are Omniture and Sitepoint (obviously the themes are related to my are of expertise). I prefer reading belletristic in the old-fashioned print format. I prefer buying books and creating a cozy library for myself and my family. 
Mig,
Thanks for sharing how you like to read. I’m happy to recommend your SEO book.
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