Ever
since the advent of internet, which was originally meant to be used as a means
of sending data to someone located at a large distance away, but we all are
aware that at present, it has changed the almost every aspect of our life in
more ways than one, literature also being one of them. Even though the whole
who hasn't been as excited for the release of ebooks as much as the release of
any iPhone in history, the fact that it has impacted the very way in which we
read content is undeniable. Now we have more info a newspaper can ever give,
and more books than a library can ever hold. However, not all of this has
happened for the best, and indeed reading on will let you know why:
The
very first books, whether fiction or non-fiction, were written on pages, which
were then duplicated and published by a publisher to the people at bookstores
or on newspaper stands. The scenario changed ever since people thought it would
be much easier to just watch it on a device which also acts as an alarm clock,
a casual gaming device, a calculator, an email client, and the list goes on and
on. And thus we have online bookstores.
Whether this is a positive or negative trait is purely your opinion, but we
certainly have some of the pros and cons of these online books which are easily
distinguishable:
Pros:
1.
Variety: Since online bookstores receive the books from people belonging to
various parts of the world, you have books available that are written in a ton
of different languages and belong to a lot more genres. Not to mention that the
books written in English has a lot of more choices compared to those written in
other languages.
2.
Hassle-Free: Gone are the days of mining through an entire bookstore to search
a book which received a very good rating by the critics, or even standing in
the line to buy the most anticipated book of the year. It's just a matter of
finding the book with the search button, and pre-ordering the book so you
reserve your spot when it is released.
3.
Worldwide release: In the old days, anyone who has written an excellent book
which deserves to be known to the world has to battle with the books which
already dominate the genre, thus making it almost impossible for their work to
be seen unless they have a ton of money to be spent on marketing. Though this
has not been completely eradicated in modern literature, the writer still stand
a better chance towards their work being noticed in comparison to old days.
Cons:
1.
Piracy: Internet piracy is one of the worst enemies of any content creation
company today since there are people out there who can simply upload it to
their website and make it available for free so that regular customer will not
have to pay for the content. This seems good from a consumer's point of view,
but seriously affects the income of the writer who has put days (maybe even
months) of their hard work in the book, not to mention that having getting
pirated stuff is illegal.
2.
Quality: Even though there are filters out there which separates a best-selling
or popular book from the not-so-popular ones, if you ever try another book from
an online bookstore, you will often realize that the content was not worth was
to pay for, simply because the internet has now become a source for any Tom, Dick
and Harry to write something and ask money for it, which seriously increases
the number of books without any quality to it.
3.
Plagiarism: Another one of the worst things for a writer whose books aren't
selling so well is plagiarism. It simply refers to taking another person's idea
or concept without their consent and then claiming it as their own. A simple
example would be that a writer named x doesn't have as much popularity as a
writer named y does but the content that x's book has is pretty amiable. The
writer y notices the potential in x's book, and takes away the idea and
presents it as his own, and receives little to no opposition since x's work
isn't known. Although this issue also exists in real-world books, the effect is
somewhat magnified when it comes to internet.
In
the end, everything has its bad and good part, and therefore it is our
responsibility to make maximum use of the positives and staying away from the
negatives to utilize the advantages of modern literature in the internet. There
are no specific commandments regarding it, but it should be obvious that you
must follow what is ethically correct, such as buying the content legally and
not copy ideas.
