eBooks in the Cloud: Desirable Features and Current
Challenges for a Cloud-based Academic eBook
Infrastructure

Wei Shen
GESIS – Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences, Lennéstr. 30, 53113 Bonn, Germany.
Email: wei.shen@gesis.org.

Ute Koch
GESIS – Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences, Schiffbauerdamm 19, 10117 Berlin, Germany.
Email: ute.koch@gesis.org.

Abstract: With the rapid development of the mobile technology, the use of multifarious mobile devices,
such as tablet PCs, eReader devices and mobile phones for electronic reading, has become an
important part of everyday life. In December 2010, Google launched its Google eBookstore with more
than 3 million e-books. The most significant feature of the new Google application is that it stores the
book content in the cloud, which enables the reader to access the book content at any time on any
mobile device in a seamless manner. A cloud-based eBook infrastructure has the characteristics of
providing a vast amount of publication information, storing and processing the data in the cloud and
displaying the results on demand on diverse desktops or mobile services. Taking into account the
characteristics of a cloud-based eBook infrastructure, the paper examines the current eBook
distribution lifecycle consisting of eBook publishing, cloud computing and mobile reading technologies.
Potential features necessary for a cloud-based academic eBook infrastructure which will better support
publishing, searching and reading on the web, as well as promote communication in the scientific
community, are outlined.
Keywords: Cloud-based eBook infrastructure; semantic publishing; mobile devices; mobile reading;
electronic books; collaboration; information search.

Introduction

Neither mobile technologies nor electronic book publishing is a newly emerging field, but with the
success of Amazon’s Kindle and the rapid growth of Amazon eBook store, they have received
increasing attention in recent years and are becoming the craze fields of innovations.
There is a wide variety of dedicated eBook readers on the market today. EBooks can be read on
various portable mobile devices, such as mobile phones, PDAs, tablet PCs. The rapid development of
specialized software applications for mobile services (iBook, Stanza and Good Reader) provide new
reading possibilities.
In December 2010, the search engine giant, Google, entered the eBook sales world and launched
Google eBooks offering more than three million titles. One important feature of the new Google
application is the ability to store the content of a book in the Google-Cloud. It enables the reader to
access any eBook content “seamlessly at any time on any device” (Google books overview, 2010). The
current world’s largest eBook online store Amazon unveiled an expanded version of Kindle for the
Web early in 2011 only one month after Google launched its eBook store.
The idea of a cloud-based model for an eBook system is not new. Safari Books (Version 6.0) released
in October 2009 attempted to improve interactivity (e.g. inline notes) and collaboration
(categorization sharing) with the basic concept “everything is always in sync because your library is
in the cloud” (O’Reilly, 2009).

The Internet Archive’s BookServer project (www.archive.org/bookserver) utilizes the cloud concept as
well. It allows readers, booksellers, authors, libraries and publishers to access and distribute eBooks
available in its distributed system through any devices they have.
The emergence of cloud-based eBook libraries is certain to provide new research opportunities,
influence digital publishing and enhance the acceptance of eBooks and other reading devices by
readers.
Although eBooks are noted as “the obvious next step to ring a full line-up of web-based basic library
resources” (Dillon, 2001), many people remain reluctant to read digital documents from screens
(O'Hara & Sellen, 1997). In particular, academic use of eBooks encounters great resistance. Michael
Gorman, former president of the American Library Association, believed that “massive databases of
digitized whole books, especially scholarly books, are expensive exercises in futility” (Gorman, 2004).
Recently, eBooks are being presented in a much more user-friendly manner on computer screens,
dedicated eReaders and mobile devices (e.g. free open eBook standard format by IDPF in the digital
publishing world and the introduction of E Ink and LCD Display technology for mobile reading
devices).
However, the “paper-like” reading experience or effect alone is not enough to convince the
conservative book readers to accept eBooks. Instead of being the surrogate for print books, eBooks
should take advantage of the dynamic nature of being digital text and provide innovative
functionalities which supersede traditional paper books.

Definition and Purpose

In this paper, important and desirable features for cloud-based academic eBook infrastructure are
proposed. Taking into account the perspectives of both the eBook publishers and the end users, we
have examined current eBook publishing, mobile technologies on the one hand and the search and
social reading behavior in scientific communities on the other. The proposed features are considered
essential and necessary features in a cloud-based academic eBook infrastructure.
We adopt the definition of cloud in the white paper “A Berkeley View of Cloud Computing”, namely
cloud is used to define hardware and software in the datacenter, which provides applications as
services referred to as Software as a Service (SaaS) over the Internet (Armbrust et al., 2009). With
this definition of cloud, it follows that a cloud-based model of eBook infrastructure allows storing
digital content in the cloud and providing end users with services for discovering, selecting and
accessing the eBook they need. Furthermore, it presents end users with the possibility of reading
eBooks from anywhere on any device.
Due to the vast number of eBooks in the cloud, end users require and demand that searching and
discovering of eBooks in a cloud-based infrastructure be intelligent and precise. Given that
nowadays, multiple devices with internet connection (PC, Laptop, Tablet PC, mobile/smart phone,
etc.) are increasingly used by end users to access the eBooks on the web, it is a natural step to move
eBook relevant services and applications to the cloud. Such a move facilitates communication and
cooperation among end users, most notably among the users in the academic community. With eBook
relevant services and applications located in the cloud environment, researchers are able to
communicate and collaborate with one another at anytime and anywhere and can be benefited by
using these services in the cloud during their whole research work process.
The emergence of cloud-based eBook infrastructure has altered the publishing process, from
traditional printing to internet digital publishing. Recent studies by Outsell’s Gilbane Group
emphasize the following five disruptive technologies as crucial for publishing industries: cloud
computing, mobile computing, business intelligence, semantic technology and Enterprise 2.0. They
expect that these five technologies "will form the bedrock for the next generation of content selling,
provisioning, and monetization" (Guenette, Trippe, & Golden, 2010). In addition to reducing cost in
the process of adopting cloud-based technologies, publishers also face the challenge of understanding
the shifts from the “digitized world” to a “community-centric web world”.
In our view, improvement of the mechanisms for digital content discovery is the key to “eBooks in the
cloud”. Innovative technologies, such as collaborative recommendation and various semantic-based
eBooks in the Cloud 81