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E-books and audiobooks

E-books and audiobooks are two particular forms of digitized publications.

E-books

The term 'e-book' can be a little confusing. Sometimes it means nothing more than just a digitized book (a type of e-text, that is). However, the term is increasingly being used for a digitized book that has been specially prepared and designed to be read on a screen. In that case, it is a digital version of a book with various additional features, such as clear design and formatting, multiple navigation options, text searching, (page) printing and digital notations. There are both commercial e-books (see e.g.eBook.nl) and freeware e-books (see e.g. eBooks@Adelaide).
Note: the alternative spellings 'ebook', 'e-Book' and 'eBook' are also used.

Much special hardware has been developed for reading e-books. Well-known examples are the e-readers by Kobo and Sony and Amazon's Kindle.com. E-books are released in different file formats. Although the PDF format is widely used (especially for non-commercial editions), there are also many special formats, which can make it difficult or impossible to read them other than on an e-reader made by one particular manufacturer. An increasing number of e-reader manufacturers, e-book distributors and software companies are now supporting the open ePub format. This is a so-called reflowable format, which means that the text adjusts to the screen. Sentences are automatically shortened when they are read on a small screen, which cannot be done in formats such as PDF. An open standard is important in order to guarantee the exchangeability of e-books now and in the future. In the Netherlands, e-book vendors including Bol.com, Libris and ebook.nl sell e-books in the ePub format. Amazon uses its own Kindle format (AZW, KF8).

Before they can be searched and analysed with programs for textual analysis, e-books in specific formats such as ePub and AZW must first be converted to TXT format. The program Calibre can be used to do this. Many publishers protect their e-books with DRM (Digital Right Management) in an attempt to prevent piracy. This security measure prevents you from creating copies by linking a personal user account to the files. Without using an illegal plugin, Calibre cannot be used to open DRM-protected e-books.

More information:
E-book, lemma on the English Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-book (accessed on 7-6-2017).

Audiobooks

Audiobooks were originally produced for visually disabled people. Since audiobooks are mainly produced digitally (usually in MP3 format), they are now also being used by a more general audience. Audiobooks have little added value in an academic context over printed books, with the possible exception of when the text is read by its author. An example of this is De AvondenThe Evenings), narrated by Gerard Reve himself.
Listen to: Reve leest De Avonden(NRC)  .

There are both commercial and free editions of audiobooks. There is also a difference between audiobooks that are narrated by people and audiobooks that are narrated by the computer by means of automatic speech production. To hear the difference for yourself, go to the Free Classic Audio Books website.

More information:
Lekker luisterlezen (VPRO-Gids; accessed on 22-02-2016)  .
Een Luisterend Oor: De Week van het Luisterboek (Erik Meijers, 8WEEKLY, 1 November 2005; accessed on 25-08-2016)  .
Audiobook, lemma on the English Wikipedia (accessed on 7-6-2017).

Other topics in this section: Introduction   Digital facsimile   E-text   Enhanced e-text   Critical edition