eBooks

Personally I don't like eBooks. I find them difficult to read either on a computer screen or on a PDA type of thing. It must be the format, it makes my eyes tired. So I'm an old fashioned paper book person.

Having said that I can see a time when eBooks will be the predominate format. Just think of all the trees that will be saved for one thing.

The industry just needs to shake down to a few different types of readers. Even amazon.com has just brought in its very own eBook called Kindle. Also the entire copyright situation needs to be worked on as well.

A couple of months ago Neil Gaiman put one of his novels up on his publishers website as a free download. He was verbally attacked from some quarters of the industry for making it a free download but there was a spike in the sales of the paper version of the book at the same time.

A lot of the spots on the World eBook Fair site were pretty bland: UN publications, US Treasury, Census Bureau... But there were also a couple of gems.

My favourite was the Children's eBook Collection with scanned reproductions of "the most popular children's books of all times". There were some old classics there like 'The Hound of the Baskervilles' and 'The Wonderful Wizard of Oz' plus Beatrix Potter and Lewis Carroll. Which surprises me because they would still be in copyright.

Oh well.