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Whatever happened to the e-book, that online manifestation of the age-old printed tome that was supposed to change the way we read? Join me as I browse the virtual aisles of online e-book stores, from EBooks.com to Barnesandnoble.com. Here's a sampling from best-seller lists I've seen: Slave Girl, Adam and Eve (not the biblical story), and The Multi-Orgasmic Couple. Seems e-books have done for the well-known author Anonymous what the Web did for porn peddlers.

Perhaps I'm exaggerating, though I was interested to see that the erotica section of EBooks.com contains 201 titles and the mystery section has 351. I don't recall encountering a similar ratio of erotica to mystery titles at my local bookstore. Clearly, mainstream e-books haven't caught on yet. So what's holding them back?

A Half-Baked Idea

What e-book marketers didn't know, Joe Public could have told them right from day one. Almost no one wants to read a novel-length book on-screen--no matter whether it's on a handheld PC, a notebook, or a special e-book device. Another drawback is the intrusive technology: To download Microsoft Reader for reading Microsoft Reader-formatted e-books, you need a Microsoft Passport account, which keeps track of which MSN sites you visit.

Similarly, Palm, which maintains a pretty good selection of e-books, maintains a "convenient" library of your purchases (so it knows that you bought The Multi-Orgasmic Couple). And fancy e-book devices like the Franklin EBookMan aren't good alternatives because many major e-book sellers don't offer anything for those special formats.

Of course, e-books aren't all bad; they don't weigh anything, so you can carry ten in your pocket. But it takes more than that to win people over. So I've thought of a few more reasons to appreciate e-books:

• If you're stuck in front of a computer all day anyway, e-books make sense. For instance, Amazon.com now sells business-focused nonfiction e-books, including research, white papers, and handbooks. And students may appreciate a CliffsNotes e-book when studying Moby-Dick.
  
  
• Many online bookstores and publishers post preview chapters of books online. I love that--makes me want to go buy the real book.
  
  
• E-books may be the best way to keep old books "in print." Warren Adler, author of The War of the Roses, bought back the rights to all his novels and now sells them as e-books.
  
  
• Thousands of public-domain books--both classics and obscure stuff--are available for free from sites such as MemoWare and Project Gutenberg.
  
  
• Like MP3 songs, e-books can introduce you to a world of unpublished writers with interesting things to say. Adobe has tools for do-it-yourself e-publishers.
  
  

In the end, isn't the Web a gigantic e-book? Netscape created bookmarks to help save your place online. There will always be books that you read and books that you use. And while I may scoff at e-books today, I know they'll eventually be useful. The Web is great at adapting.

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