March 2-8, 2008, is the annual Read an eBook Week. In honor of that event, Epublishers weekly has blogged Michael Pastore's list of 30 Benefits of eBooks. Here are some of my favorites:

3. Ebooks preserve books. (The library of Alexandria was burned and the collection ruined. Richard Burton's wife, after his death and against his wishes, destroyed a book he had been working on for ten years. The original manuscript of Carlyle's The French Revolution was lost when a friend's servant tossed it into the fire.) Ebooks are ageless: they do not burn, mildew, crumble, rot, or fall apart. Ebooks ensure that literature will endure.
4. Ebooks, faster to produce than paper books, allow readers to read books about current issues and events.
5. Ebooks are easily updateable, for correcting errors and adding information.
6. Ebooks are searchable. Quickly you can find anything inside the book. Ebooks are globally searchable: you can find information in many ebooks.
16. Ebooks make reading accessible to persons with disabilities. Text can be re-sized for the visually impaired. Screens can be lit for reading in the dark.
23. Ebooks empower individuals to write and to publish, and in this way help to challenge "the crushing power of big publishing", that excludes so many authors from the New York City publishing circus. Publishing can move from the impersonal and profitable, to the personal and pleasurable.
28. Ebooks help paperbook publishers to sell paperbooks. Cory Doctorow has explained that the giving away of ebooks, for free, has helped to sell the paperback editions of his stories and novels.

Update: Rita Toews posted a comment below with a link to a site with more info about Read an eBook Week. Check it out!

Labels: eBooks