A large part of the meaning of a word comes from the associations that it has. Ebook publishers rely on this to create a market for ebooks - ebooks are a lot like ordinary books, so if you like books there's going to be no problem with ebooks. But of course, ebooks are, in most respects, so unlike books that perhaps we need a different noun. The things I can't do with a ebook that I can do with a book:
- Own it (often I have only a license)
- Resell it
- Let someone borrow it (not usually and not easily)
- Give it away (again not usually and not easily)
- Have half a dozen open at the same time whilst I write a paper
- Decorate my study with them
- Give them as gifts (not as easily as giving books at least)
I could go on, but my point is that ebooks are more different from books than they are similar. The problem is that many of us try to relate to ebooks
as if the were books - and we come up against frustration and annoyance when we are confronted by one of the many ways in which they are not like books.
The two sorts of solutions that seem to be suggested on this thread and others is either to make ebooks more like books, or to forget that they are any sort of book in the traditional sense at all.
The publishers I suspect would like us to pursue the latter course of action, yet at the same time all their marketing and the general discourse of ebooks encourages me to think of these electronic files as books - which of course they are not. So, if the producers of ebooks want me to stop thinking of their products as books they should start being honest about what they are selling me - a license to use an electronic file - and not just in the "fine print" but in the very presentation of their product.