eBooks at John Smith's

 


New...Student Textbooks available as well in VitalSource's interactive, digital format.

John Smith's is proud to be able to bring you a wide range of digital books (eBooks) from a variety of publishers - both academic publishers (such as Pearson Education) and the more general trade publishers (eg. Harper Collins).

Customers can search for and buy these eBooks as simply as for the more traditional printed books. In most cases no specialist reader is necessary to be able to take advantage of this new technology.

This page is designed to introduce and explain some of the different words and phrases you will come into contact with when deciding about buying an eBook.

There are many different formats of eBooks. However the majority do not require specialist equipment but can be either read online or be downloaded to your PC or laptop. In most cases there is a small piece of software which is downloaded from the Internet to enable you to read the books.

Features of eBooks:

  • Highlights & Notes: Some eBook formats allow highlighting of text (especially useful for student textbooks, where the highlights and accompanying notes can be referred to for pre-exam revision)
  • Copy and Paste: Some eBooks will allow copying and pasting of text into other documents (dependent on publisher permissions) - useful for including quotations in essays and other word documents
  • Printing: Subject to publisher permissions some eBooks will allow printing of some or all of a book's text. Most restrict this to a few pages at a time so the book is not merely printed off to be distributed to friends
  • Downloadable: Content can be transferred to your hard disk, for use on one or more devices (again subject to publisher permissions)
  • Online: Content can only be accessed or read when connected to the Internet

The most popular and famous formats are:

DX ReaderDX Reader
Mobipocket ReaderMobipocket Reader
Adobe ReaderAdobe Reader
Vital Source VitalBooksVital Source VitalBooks