How Does an "E-book" Differ from a Printed Book?

When you purchase an "e-book" (i.e., "electronic book or report ") from me it's delivered or downloaded in electronic form. It's less expensive than a printed version because our costs are lower to produce it.

Many folks choose to read an e-book on their computer screen without ever printing it out. However, if you prefer to read in your easy chair or elsewhere you can print a version to peruse at your leisure. Keep in mind unless you print the e-book with a high quality printer the images probably won't look as good on paper as they do on your computer screen.

When you purchase one of my e-books, you'll be redirected to a download page. Don't worry if you lose the page you'll also receive a link in an email message that will take you to the same page so you can download the e-book file. The page will only remain active for 24 hours after your purchase is confirmed, so make sure you download the file and save it to your hard drive before the end of that period.

Depending upon the speed of your internet connection and the size of the e-book, the download can take a few seconds to many minutes to complete.

The e-book file is in PDF format, so to read it you'll need the free Adobe Acrobat PDF Reader, which is probably already installed on your computer. Once you've downloaded and saved the e-book file to your computer, double click on the filename to open it. If it opens, that means you already have Acrobat Reader installed on your computer. If it doesn't open, you probably need to download a free copy or at least get the latest version of Acrobat Reader at http://adobe.com/products/acrobat/readermain.html. They'll give you instructions on how to install Acrobat Reader on your computer.

Some e-book files may be so large that download time is prohibitively long. In that case the file will be compressed or "zipped". If your e-book comes in a file that ends with the suffix .zip (for my larger e-book files), you'll need to unzip or decompress the file before opening it. Once you download the file to your computer, double click on it. If it opens, that means you already have the right utility program installed in your computer. Then make sure you save the decompressed file. If the zipped file does not open, download a file compression program such as WinZip (at winzip.com, you can download a trial version free) and use it to decompress the file. Then open it for reading with Acrobat Reader.

If you have any problems downloading, opening or printing the file or any other concerns, please contact me.

All the best,

Gary Nie, DVM