E-books and ‘Real Books’
Digital Reading and the Experience of Bookness

Drawing on new reader data, Laura Dietz explores e-books' unstable realness, and the roles 'unreal' books play in our lives.

Laura Dietz (Author)

9781009490764, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 23 January 2025

263 pages
23.5 x 15.8 x 1.9 cm, 0.53 kg

'A nuanced survey of readerly perceptions around ebooks, this is a study that respects the complexities of engaging with the material and shows appreciation for the deeply contextual nature of the arguments concerned, dispelling notions of a rigid binary set up by metaphors around 'the death of the book' or 'book wars'. This is an informative and insightful contribution to scholarly field of publishing studies.' Simon Rowberry, Lecturer in Publishing, University College London

On any given day, millions of people will read e-books. Yet many of us will do so while holding them apart from 'real books'. The fact that a book can be worthy – of our time, money, respect, even love – without being 'real' is a fascinating paradox of twenty-first century reading. Drawing on original data from a longitudinal study, Laura Dietz investigates how movement between conceptions of e-books as ersatz, digital proxy, and incomplete books serves readers in unexpected ways. The cultural value of e-books remains an area of intense debate in publishing studies. Exploring the legitimacy of e-books in terms of their 'realness' and 'bookness', Dietz enriches our understanding of what e-books are, while also opening up new ways of thinking about how we imagine, how we use, and what we want from books of every kind. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

List of figures
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1. Bookness
2. Paratexts and first impressions: taking a chance on an e-book
3. Ownership and permanence: e-book transactions
4. Materiality, convenience, and customization: e-books and the act of reading
5. Reading lives and reading identities: genre, audience, and being a reader of e-books
Coda
Notes.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: general [DSB]