O'Reilly on not focusing on the form of the book but the function

Here’s the rub: most peo­ple think­ing about ebooks are focused on cre­at­ing an elec­tronic recre­ation of print books, com­plete with down­load­able files and devices that look and feel like books. This is a bit like point­ing a cam­era at a stage play and con­clud­ing that was the essence of filmmaking!

At O’Reilly, we’ve tried to focus not on the form of the book but on the job that it does for our cus­tomers. It teaches, it informs, it enter­tains. How might elec­tronic pub­lish­ing help us to advance those aims? How might we cre­ate a more effec­tive tool that would help our cus­tomers get their job done?

It was by ask­ing our­selves those ques­tions that we real­ized the advan­tages of an online library avail­able by sub­scrip­tion. One of the best things about online tech­ni­cal books is the abil­ity to search the full text of a book. How much bet­ter would it be to be able to search across thou­sands of books? Safari Books Online was our answer.

via snarkmarket.com