Why most e-books on the internet are not worth the digital ink they are printed with
Many websites offer e-books for download or purchase, but are you getting a good deal by buying them?
The internet has changed the way that information is published. Now anyone anywhere can write a website, e-book or training course and publish it on the web, relatively inexpensively.
This information revolution is on the whole, great news for content creators and consumers alike. Content creators can deliver their products to consumers at minimal cost, with minimal fuss and consumers can buy and use digital content easily and cheaply. Sites like ours would not exist without the great new content delivery model that is the modern internet.
However, this brave new world of content is not without its drawbacks. Now literally anyone can publish an e-book in a matter of minutes. Unlike conventional books however, e-books do not have to go through proof reading or publisher acceptance, that means the quality of e-books available on the web, both free and paid for, varies extremely widely. Unfortunately, it seems that many e-book authors do not bother to proof read their content at all, here are some snippets we took from other e-books available on the internet:-
“In my opinion, you may or may not need those depending on your need.”
“The main problem most users encounter is the computer fails to start when the power button is press.”
“The 64bit OS was not available when the program socket open the cover, remove the protective cover”.
As you can see, an obvious lack of care and attention is apparent in many of the e-books we reviewed. While the books are still able to get their message across, their lack of polish tarnishes them when compared to a typical printed book. If this was information that was freely available, a few mistakes could be excused, but when you are required to pay for a book, either an electronic book or a printed one, we believe that you should expect higher standards.
Why our e-books are different
The e-books we produce at Top-Windows-Tutorials are designed to supplement the other training materials on the DVD’s we produce. We realise that everyone has different ways of learning, but most people prefer to see a worked example. This is the next best thing to having your own tutor. However, having a book is also useful for revision, or to have handy for quick reference when working with your computer. This doesn’t mean our e-books are second rate, far from it. The e-books contained on our Superguide DVD’s could easily be sold as stand alone products. They cover all the material we cover in the video tutorials and more besides.
Our e-books are also carefully proof-read by an experienced proof reader. Each book is read at least three times fully from cover to cover, ensuring mistakes are always kept to a minimum. We take pride in the material we sell to our readers and we believe that the end product speaks for itself. We invite you to download a sample chapter from our Windows 7 Superguide e-book here before you decide to purchase the DVD.
Finally, we know that piracy is a big problem for all digital content creators. Like everyone else, piracy hurts us, but more so since we are a small company. However, we have never used any copy protection on our Superguide DVD’s. It is our belief that copy protection hinders the consumer and simply makes finding a pirate copy (without copy protection restrictions) more desirable. Therefore, unlike many of our competitors books, you are free to print all the pages of our Superguide E-books and even copy and paste sections from the e-book into your own notes. All we ask is that you please do not share the content with anyone else. We’re not a faceless corporation but a small independent publisher/content provider, please don’t make us regret our stance against DRM and copy protection!
Read more about OpenOffice Writer Superguide
Read more about Windows 7 Superguide