Imagine going off on a hiking trip and taking 10 books with you, including a dictionary and an encyclopedia -- all on one small machine that weighs about a pound. Welcome to the electronic book, or e-book for short, a digital file of reading material that you can download from the Internet and read in electronic format. It's compact, it's digital and it's the cutting edge of a revolution that has the whole book publishing world looking over its shoulder. E-book technology is growing fast and getting cheaper.

E-books work in two ways. You can download the e-book using free software that allows everyone, regardless of computer or platform, to view and print the book in the same way. You can download this software, the Adobe Acrobat Reader, at www.adobe.com. Or you can buy an e-reader, so that once you download the book; you can walk away from the computer and take the book with you. Right now, Chapters is the only Canadian book retailer offering e-books on its web site. Martha Cass, director of public and investor relations at Chapters, says, "E-books are a way to get product quickly and conveniently to the customer." To buy the e-reader online, you may have to go American. Barnes and Noble and E Book Empire sell e-readers online. For a growing list of e-book downloads, check out http://www.netbooks.com/, http://www.books2read.com/ and www.iuniverse.com.

Why buy an e-book?

Look at it this way. An e-book is not just a book you read on a computer screen. It's also a way of downloading an increasingly large selection of books off the Internet. You can create your own custom-made library. Big book publishers such as Random House are starting to make their titles available in e-book format. Take a look at www.quantummusic.com/overview for a comprehensive list of most e-book related sites, as well as articles about e-books.

There's choice

For those who want to take e-books on a camping trip without taking a laptop, the self-contained hand-held reading devices (e-readers) are about the same size as a paperback book. Two e-readers have hit the market in a big way, Rocket eBook and SoftBooks, and they promise not just to reproduce but also to replace the experience of reading a paper book. Needless to say, Microsoft has entered the fray with its Microsoft Reader. As of right now, a Microsoft Reader e-book can't be opened by a Rocket eBook, and vice versa. The battle for the dominant technology is on. Remember Beta/VHS?

Freeloading downloads

Glassbook http://www.glassbook.com/ offers you free software you can download to your desktop or laptop computer. It's a lot like browsing the Internet. To "turn" pages, you click on the same full-colour display and navigation bar with which you are already familiar. Laptop users can rotate the display 90 degrees to simulate the experience of holding an open book. Glassbook will also upgrade your e-book reader with additional features, such as a built-in dictionary, the ability to flag pages for quick reference and a stylus for making notes in the margin.

Deconstructing the rocket

The Rocket eBook from NuvoMedia weighs about 1.4 lbs. The screen is about 3 by 4.5 inches (8 by 11 centimetres). The type isn't as sharp (yet) as in a paperback, but you can read it easily for a few hours at a time -- something that's hard to do on a normal computer screen. Batteries are good for about 17 hours. And get this -- each Rocket eBook holds about 4,000 pages. That's about 10 books. The Pro version holds about 40 books. You can find all the support you need at http://www.rocket-ebook.com/

The hard facts about SoftBooks

SoftBooks uses a self-contained e-book reading device that resembles an electronic organizer. Its screen is 8 by 6 inches (20 by 15 centimetres) and the type is bigger than that in the eBook. And you don't need a computer to use a SoftBook. All you have to do is plug the e-reader into a phone jack and download manuscripts directly from the Internet. A built-in modem grabs text from SoftBook servers.

Unlimited horizons

Print-on-demand books will be the real growth area for e-books. These are books that are published electronically and bought only as needed. So if you need information about a certain topic and find five books that offer it, you can download only the material you need. Reference, technical and educational materials are the first areas being mined for e-book material. As Martha Cass says, "This is where the real niche and the real promise of e-books is, because there is unlimited potential for additional functionality."

The legal brief

E-books are only now becoming easily downloadable and readily available because the most important aspect of downloading books from the Internet -- protecting books from illegal duplication -- has been solved. Now all e-books you pay for are secure and copyrighted and cannot be altered, duplicated or output to a printer. A new protocol, the Electronic Book Exchange (EBX), protects copyright and distribution and all the major e-book players are behind it.

Reading the future of e-books

It's so labour intensive to publish a paper book that profit margins are always pretty low. With e-books, there are no paper and printing costs. Look for more and more publishers to ride this wave in the next few years. Sony recently announced that it will license its Palm Pilot operating system to e-book fans. In the meantime, Microsoft and Barnes & Noble are making plans for an e-book superstore.

Glossary

Adobe's PDF Merchant is a server-based technology that manages the security of and access to portable document format (PDF) files.

Encryption is a code embedded in a document that ensures content cannot be viewed before it is published and, once downloaded, can't be copied, printed or redistributed.

E-readers are hand-held devices with a screen the same size as a pocketbook. They are portable and lightweight.

PDF means portable document format -- free software created by Adobe that allows you to download and read files regardless of what type of computer or software you use.

Quirks

Do you have five minutes? If you have a PDA running Palm OS or CE, that's how long it takes to download Stephen King's "Riding the Bullet" at Peanut Press http://www.peanutpress.com/, a site that offers e-books for hand held computers. It's a good bet that the future of the e-book lies in multifunction devices like the Palm Pilot, where you can not only read a book but also write notes or letters. A bit like...paper?