Online book publishing or also referred to as electronic publishing all together means, the publishing of electronic articles and e-books, as well as the development of virtual libraries, or multimedia libraries or simply as, digital libraries within the scope of the Internet.

Online book publishing has become one of the most popular modes of distributing various kinds of book publications. And most of which are better known as e-books. E-books are the digital or electronic versions of the printed books in which they are done in digital formats or by a hardware device applied to be able to read any publication in these formats. As soon as information is bundled together in an electronic book, online publishers essentially distribute their works to their target readers or users. Most of these e-books going around cyberspace contain metadata as found in their printed counterpart and includes important details about the author, the publisher, the titles, and the copyright date.

Online books may also be published in various formats, as long as it keeps target readers in plain view and the work is digitalized. Among the commonly applied other formats are imaging, as typically applied on comic books, visual works, or art books; rich text; HTML or the hyper text markup language, which is mostly used in creating web pages; .ps or PostScript, used primarily in desktop publishing industries to enhance quality of an already printed page out from its actual bitmap file.

More advanced formats incorporated into online book publishing includes TeX. This one is popularly applied as an academic format. Another is the .pdf file format or Portable Document, as created by the Adobe System in providing a more standard form for editing and storing publishable documents. The eReader is an essential program used to view Palm Digital Media e-books, while the DesktopAuthor is a digital publishing suite, which allows the development of digital web books complete with virtual turn of the pages. Along with digital web books, other virtual products that make use of the DekstopAuthor are e-brochures, digital photo albums, e-books, digital diaries, e-cards, quizzes, online resumes, surveys, forms, exams, and online tests.

Why will you use the services of an online book publisher? What are the desirable benefits that go with online publishing? Looking back many, many years before, the fate of your book and your writing career relied on the hands of publishing companies. But this has changed tremendously through the years. Today, in collaboration with innovation and modern technology, books and other reading materials can be formatted and published fast and easily online. Not to say, affordable.

Some online book publishing companies use the POD or the print-on-demand printing method, wherein, as the books are ready, they are shipped immediately to the waiting client, cutting down warehousing and storage costs that are ever present with traditional publishing. In addition, your right to your book remains with you even after the book is published online. Unlike the printed approach, you will be required to give up a bit of your right. And because of technology, online books are better looking with less production waste, earning you a greater royalty. Moreover, online book publishers give off a flexible selling base regardless of the online store, either from shopping sites like e-bay and Amazon or Wal-Mart. But the best benefit of online book publishing is the bigger possibility of your book to be published.

Online books somehow are more advantageous compared to the printed books, as the former are obviously less bulky, can be easily formatted and copied, distributed at lesser prices, less errors, and offer more authorial and editorial freedom. However, it does not end here. Online book publishing also has its own share of concerns, such as the fact that e-books can be conveniently and easily disseminated or hacked without any approval from the publisher or author.