Electronic books cost less and can be read on a wide range of devices
By
Tan Weizhen
THE popularity of electronic books is rising in Singapore, buoyed by the availability of a variety of readers, from computers to smartphones to dedicated devices like Sony's e-Reader and Amazon's Kindle.
Growing selection to choose from
THE National Library Board (NLB) has a growing collection of e-books which users can read for free.
It has 770,000 e-books now. Of these, 630,000 can be downloaded to handheld devices like Apple's iPhone, HP's iPAQ, and Palm and Blackberry devices, said Mr Ivan Koh, NLB's manager of digital resources and services.
Another factor: More and more electronic versions of books are becoming available, they are cheaper, and some - legally or not - can even be had for free.
Users also say that in some cases, e-books are more convenient. Stored on, say, an iPhone, Tolstoy's War And Peace is much easier to tote around than the weighty tome itself.
The National Library Board (NLB) is leading the e-book charge here. It has more than 770,000 e-books in its collection, and said interest has grown by an average of 10 per cent over the past year.
For example, its World e-Book Library collection of fiction and non-fiction books has received more than a million hits from readers here over the past year, up from what NLB called a 'not comprehensive' audience in the past.
Page views of its eBrary collection - which features books on subjects like science and technology and economics, among others - hit 165,162 in the period from April last year to last month.
This compares to 16,903 page views between April 2007 and March last year.
