@Guilherme – I’m a cover to cover reader

@Donald – I have never got on with the executable ebooks (if you mean .exe ebooks) because they have been given a bad name through the amount of “free” software that are merely trojans and find that they are rarely mac compatible anyway. Do you find you have to overcome a lot of objections to their use?

The idea of making a blog an ebook is great because the ebook si never complete, plus other people can write in it and leave their two cents worth.

I am offering my Ebook By Blog ebook free of charge. Anyone can get it if they want it by clicking here below.

Download Ebook By Blog

I don’t think that ebooks are dead, nor do I think that they will ever die, not when there is the ability to add multi-media to them such as audio, video and anything else that you can possibly think of. Now that the blog is here to stay, they too can become full-blown information products too.

Of course, the really nice thing about using a blog as an ebook, is that you don’t ahve to end up cluttering up people’s hard drives with a lot of bits and bytes. All they have to do, is to simply download a very small executable file that is linked to the Internet and to their blog, and then they will be able to read the information online right from inside the executable ebook format. Pretty nifty huh?

I have been an ebook author for quite some time now, and I have seen many things come and go, but I still see two main formats, the executable format and the PDF format being the main ebook formats to date. Of course, video is really taking hold on the Internet, but that too can be implemented into ebooks with no problem whatsoever. The same goes for audio, flash and anything else that you can possibly think of.

I personally love ebooks and I love reading them on my computer screen. I also love creating them as well, and I have several ebook compilers on my hard drive, including a number of PDF creation tools too.

I’ve been using a Kindle for a couple of months now, and it is one of the single greatest pieces of technology I’ve ever used. The text is supurbly readable, the device is very mobile, I have an enormous amount of content at my disposal and can annotate, highlight, and bookmark as I see fit.

I also get the NY Times every morning, something hard to pull off on the barren cultural wastes of the Midwest.

That being said, I don’t subscribe to any blogs via it. Blogs “work” on a computer because they are brief, and while I read an enormous amount of feeds I don’t want to read anything too long on a computer screen. This includes ebooks.

But an eBook on an eInk screen is an entirely different thing. It’s easier than a book in many ways.

I noticed how frustrating was not having CTRL+F in paper books in college, more or less at the same time I became addict to “The Index” at the end of the books.

CTRL+F is still better, though.

In order to compete with printed material, ebooks need to be more portable, simple to lay aside while you check a different reference, bookmark your place, dog-ear the interesting pages, highlight and make notes. Some books remind the owner ‘remember me’ with a distinctive cover, being shelved next to (dozens to hundreds) of other books. The owner adds a lot of value to a printed book, both by adding to the book (or removing unwanted stuff) and by the way the object is stored and handled.

ebook readers were late getting into mass adoption. They are still relatively confined to computers, which restricts the audience to those comfortable spending reading time at the computer, and those that casually keep laptops with them.

That said, I think there is room for a ‘captured blog’ format. Some blogs benefit enormously from community contribution – ebooks seldom provide the diverse discussion that occasionally makes blog comment sections so valuable. A collection of blog posts, with comments intact, would be of interest. Add a table of contents, search, index contributors and topics. The result would not be confused with literature, and might start looking like the rough start of a blog-into-ebook. The value would be the editing – selecting and organizing the blog sequence – and the amenities added.

There is probably also room for an automatically updated app – take the above collection, and update with comments added over time. The comments could contain the domains cited by commentors, adding value even to many of the ‘Good Post!’ fluff. An appendix could do a short bio on commentors, where the info is available and pertinent.

The current ebook concept suffers from lack of editing expertise. Just as audio books often sell better depending on the voice talent, ebooks should include who did the document workup and polish. Right now there is no one to advise the author ‘do some more work before you try to release this.’ And many ebooks suffer – as does the image of ebooks for being short, repetitive, and middling content value.

Glad you asked!

Personally (and I know this sounds dumb) but I get frustrated with a printed book when I can’t hit CTRL+F and find the text I’m looking for. Amazing how you take things for granted isn’t it?