E‐books access models: an analytical comparative study

Purpose – Though electronic books (e‐books) are not new, they are slow in their uptake compared to other types of e‐publications such as journals, newspapers. The possible reasons for this could be because the technology for creating/accessing e‐books (both hardware and software) is not yet matured. However, the recent involvement of many commercial publishers and aggregators in publishing and marketing of e‐books has triggered their use. This trend suggests making an analytical comparative study of the e‐book access model. The main purpose of this study is to analyse and compare offline and online e‐book access models.Design/methodology/approach – In this paper an attempt is made to analyse and compare three offline and three online e‐book access models by identifying various specific e‐book access model features. The access models are evaluated based on three‐point scale.Findings – It is observed that among offline access models Microsoft Reader has most of the features well defined and among online acc...