Ted Striphas asks why we insist on calling ebooks books:

So let me end with a modest proposal. Perhaps it’s time we cease referring to electronic reading devices as “e-books” and instead find some other, less papercentric, name. Maybe then, when the technology no longer feels compelled to prove its worthiness in relation to paper, will digital reading achieve what’s been expected of it for so long.

I can’t disagree with what he’s saying.  Comparing “ebooks” to “email” isn’t fair because the word “mail” just never had that much emotional significance attached to it.

But if it’s an electronic version of a print book, it would be hard to call it anything else but a book.  Or is “book” too general?  Should we be more specific in calling things what they are (gay Sikh romance novel, spit-flecked right-wing diatribe, thinly disguised pornography for teenage girls, etc.)?  Or should we be more general and simply call it “electronic text” (brrrrrr…so c-cold)?

Or should we just come up with a new term altogether for the ebook?  Suggestions:

• hot words
• text-a-go-go
• e-golem
• meaningful arrangement of electronic letters
• word game
• iBook (name taken)
• da book
• naked lady
• metanarrator
• iPhone words
• awesome
• word war
• final draft
• crystal words-meth
• affirmation!
• mike cane
• time killer
• word virus
• second life third life
• ephemeron
• social interaction avoidance mechanism
• thousands-of-hours-of-work-thing
• information that wants to be freeeeeeee!!!

Any other suggestions?

Hat tip, J.A. Furtado.