Online Books - EBooks Online

By David Dritsas

Blumsday LLC

(CNN) -- Paul Jessup is an avid reader who is increasingly turning to e-books to feed his love of the written form. It's not just ease of use that draws Jessup to books in a digital form, it's the potential e-books represent.

"It's much better for looking things up, since any e-reader's search function is 10 times better than flipping and looking and searching on my own" in a printed book, said Jessup, an Erie, Pennsylvania-based writer.

He is one of a growing number of bibliophiles, spurred by new reading technologies like Kindle: Amazon's 6" Wireless Reading Device (Latest Generation) , who are gravitating to the digital realm.

Key developments in displays are improving e-book reading devices, whether it be E Ink's displays in products like the Sony Reader and the Kindle, or the easy on the eyes organic light emitting diode (OLED) screens being used in netbook computers and smartphones. Up-and-coming technology promises to enhance e-book reading even further.

Low-power, reflective e-paper displays, which can be read in direct sunlight, are expected to hit the market in the next year from companies like Prime View International and Plastic Logic, said Nick Colaneri, director of the Flexible Display Center at Arizona State University.

"At first these will be flat and largely indistinguishable from the displays in devices like Amazon's Kindle," Colaneri said. "But the availability of a new feature like mechanical flexibility always stimulates the creative energies of designers."

Truly flexible displays could be available in three to five years, Colaneri said. Electronic readers could become as thin as a sheet of paper and able to contain hundreds of book titles, magazine articles and other content.

Internet connectivity will go hand in hand with these devices, letting consumers download content from just about anywhere using Wi-Fi or mobile phone networks.

In fact, they already can. The Kindle: Amazon's 6" Wireless Reading Device (Latest Generation) connects wirelessly to Amazon's store, allowing users to buy and download books to the device within minutes. Not to be outdone, Barnes & Noble recently launched its own e-book store and an e-reader app that allows users to download books to their smartphones.

It seems the time is right for these advances. E-book sales are seeing a significant upswing, said Hugh McGuire, CEO of Book Oven, an online company that builds Web tools for publishing e-books and print-on-demand titles.

Online books are the wave of the FUTURE. Stephen King brought online books to the attention of the world by publishing his novel, "Riding the Bullet", exclusively in online book form. In the first 24 hours it was available, 400,000 copies were downloaded - more than any other book in any format!