E-books and ‘Real Books’
eBook - PDF

E-books and ‘Real Books’

Digital Reading and the Experience of Bookness

  1. 266 pages
  2. English
  3. PDF
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - PDF

E-books and ‘Real Books’

Digital Reading and the Experience of Bookness

About this book

On any given day, millions of people will read e-books. Yet many of us will do so while holding them apart from 'real books'. The fact that a book can be worthy – of our time, money, respect, even love – without being 'real' is a fascinating paradox of twenty-first century reading. Drawing on original data from a longitudinal study, Laura Dietz investigates how movement between conceptions of e-books as ersatz, digital proxy, and incomplete books serves readers in unexpected ways. The cultural value of e-books remains an area of intense debate in publishing studies. Exploring the legitimacy of e-books in terms of their 'realness' and 'bookness', Dietz enriches our understanding of what e-books are, while also opening up new ways of thinking about how we imagine, how we use, and what we want from books of every kind. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

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Information

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Half-title
  3. Reviews
  4. Title page
  5. Imprints page
  6. Dedication
  7. Table of Contents
  8. List of Figures
  9. Acknowledgements
  10. Introduction
  11. Chapter 1 Bookness
  12. Chapter 2 Paratexts and First Impressions: Taking a Chance on an E-book
  13. Chapter 3 Ownership and Permanence: E-book Transactions
  14. Chapter 4 Materiality, Convenience, and Customisation: E-books and the Act of Reading
  15. Chapter 5 Reading Lives and Reading Identities: Genre, Audience, and Being a Reader of E-books
  16. Coda
  17. Appendix: Definitions
  18. Notes
  19. Index

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