Case Study Article 3

Way back in the mid 1970s, when the term 'paperless office' was first coined, many of us truly believed that it was not only a possibility but inevitability. As personal computers became ever more widespread, and the internet faster and more connected, that idea took on greater currency but even with the increasing popularity of the ebook we still live in a very paper-full environment and our offices are yet to become paperless. But perhaps the soothsayers were just a little too pre emptive in their declaration and it's not the case that they were wrong. Little in technology goes according to plan and people, in general, are a conservative bunch. People like their books, their newspapers, their magazine stands and paper flyers - the death of paperwork may not be upon us yet, although that may only be because habits change slowly. But habits are changing.

Whether you are surfing websites or ebay, the presence of ebooks on the internet lately can't be ignored. Where there used to be a few simple formats, such as the widespread PDF, there are now a wide range of ebook technologies and means of viewing them - you no longer need a computer to read an ebook but can do so on your PDA, your mobile phone, or a number of other devices. With the advent of the PDA and internet surfing mobile phone, it is now possible to read ebooks in almost any environment and on an ever increasing range of devices; as digital ink and digital paper develop, the traditional paper and ink book might yet be in its last dying days.

What this means is that the market for ebooks is expanding and developing; more people are getting access to them through mobile devices and, therefore, more people are reading them and accessing them. Whereas in the early days ebooks were seen as of low or patchy value, and 'throw away', they are more and more being seen as a credible alternative to the paper format. And in a world of 'all-in-one' and 'on-the-go' gadgets, such laptops, mobile phones, portable organizers, ipods, mp3 players, and DVD players - the ebook is a far more portable format, among devices, than is a paper book and is gradually becoming 'cool' among the geeks as adverts for the next new PDA show people reading classical texts on them. Everyone else will soon follow.

The most popular ebook format remains the PDF. There is more competition now, from other formats, but the PDF has been around longest and has the widest circulation so it's certainly here to stay for the time being. The PDF is a file format originally created by the software company Adobe Systems and was designed to provide a standardized format for distributing, storing and editing publishable documents. At the time of its inception one of the main difficulties in the computer environment was the variety of hardware and software formats which made exchanging and sharing files a severe difficulty due to a range of incompatibility issues. The PDF file format was created as a solution to this problem, back in the early 1990s, and was presented as a device independent and display independent document format; over time it has become more and more versatile and accessible by more and more devices.

When first distributed, the Adobe PDF creation tools and the software necessary to read them cost money; so their use was restricted to professional environments, especially among print and publishing. But when the Adobe Reader tool became free to download and use, the PDF quickly became the de facto ebook format. More recent versions of the format allow click able hyperlinks within the text as well as a specialized Adobe reader for PDA technologies which allows for reflowable text in small devices.

Ever since the PDF format became an 'open standard', not only is there free distribution and easy availability of the Adobe reader, but a variety of PDF creation tools can be found at cheaper prices than Adobe's own, and even free. All Adobe products support the creation of PDF documents, but so do many third party products such as PDFCreator, OpenOffice, Mac OSX and FOP. PDFOnline is a website which will turn your documents into PDFs free in seconds.

For a product format as 'cool' and in demand as ebooks, which can be produced at such a low cost, those with imagination and drive can still build a profitable digital publishing empire. They are cheap to produce, easy to distribute and have no delivery costs attached either. With the new technologies clambering to accommodate them as yet another mobile activity ebooks will only get more popular. As a business person all you need to do is find a niche and get writing.