Taking your library on the road

By Gene Bisbee

You're packing for the next business trip, but your carry-on bag is already chockfull. You'd like to cram in that newest management strategies book, but you can't focus on that for an entire 4-hour flight. You'd also really like to take that spy novel you've been reading but can't seem to finish. And there's the topical bestseller from a Capitol Hill insider that all your coworkers are talking about.

What a dilemma: So many books, but so little space.

There's a solution to that problem as publishers are releasing many of their titles in a digital format. Called e-books, thousands of top sellers are available for purchase online. Some classics in the public domain are even available for free.

The beauty of this for the business traveler is that these electronic books can be stored and read on a laptop, PDA, smartphone or dedicated e-book device.

Online e-book retailers sell the same categories of contemporary books that you'd find in your big-box bookstores, such as business, reference, history, biography and science in the nonfiction section and adventure, crime, fantasy and thrillers in the fiction department.

Because production costs are minimal, retailers such as ebooks.com and ereader.com can offer these books at a reduced price. Project Gutenberg, however, the first digital library, offers more than 20,000 books for free; they're primarily older classics - by such authors as Charles Dickens and Mark Twain - that have been cleared of copyright restrictions.

Purchasers need to choose a format - Adobe eBook Reader, MobiPocket Reader, or Microsoft Reader - when downloading an e-book to a computer. The consumer then transfers it to a mobile device for reading away from the home or office.

Many consider reading a book on a small PDA screen as less than ideal, and who wants to lug around and boot up a laptop just to read a book? That's why Sony introduced its paperback-book-sized e-book reader that weighs about a half pound and can store the equivalent of 80 books in its memory.

On the market for about a year, the Sony Reader allows users to adjust the type size and flip pages on a screen that uses a display technology that is similar to paper and even readable outdoors in the daylight. The battery can power about 7,500 page turns before recharge, and a slot for memory cards can enlarge the handheld library.

Some criticized the Sony Reader for being accessible only to Sony's online book retailer - Connect. To resolve that issue, Sony plans to adopt Adobe software that will enable consumers to buy e-books anywhere.

The world's biggest bookstore, Amazon.com, is expected to be the next with an e-book reader, the Kindle. Although under wraps for months, early plans show a device similar in size to the Sony Reader with a major difference.

The Kindle comes equipped with a small keyboard and wireless modem for downloading manuscripts directly over a high-speed EVDO network, so there's no need to connect to a computer. Users can buy books, magazines, newspapers and even browse websites from this device.