It's an interesting question, though to me more a matter of distinguishing between "document" and "book" than print vs. electronic. For example, libraries have often discussed their collections in terms of "books" by eliding the book/document issue and simply citing however many catalog items they have. Thus libraries with Gov Docs holdings often had huge collections that were made up in large part of microfiche and single page items.
I think a lot of it also goes to the purpose of the content. Is it a story? Is it meant to be directly informational (most pamphlets, for example)? Is it a research study or journalism?
Will authors start publishing small clusters of blog posts & story outline notes as ebooks, either for free or $.99 each, just to have more books available to drive up name recognition? Would it be unethical to do so?
They may not have been assembling them as eBooks but a lot of bloggers have been reprinting their blog contents for some time now. And a lot of journalists and/or foundations are moving to publish, as "eBooks" expanded articles or a collection of articles. So I'd say this is already underway.
I would say that the term "digital download" is the best term for all the content that is designed through format or access to be read as a standalone item, and perhaps on a standalone device. For example, while I have some long meta posts too, I never designed them to be a particular type of reading experience. In fact, I think a lot of people have become writers or have written more because the online format has always seemed more ephemeral and thus more liberating because it doesn't generally demand the same careful attention to detail that used to be the province of officially published material. But lately even people who write comments online have gotten writing gigs from their efforts so you're certainly right that a lot of lines are blurring.
no subject
I think a lot of it also goes to the purpose of the content. Is it a story? Is it meant to be directly informational (most pamphlets, for example)? Is it a research study or journalism?
Will authors start publishing small clusters of blog posts & story outline notes as ebooks, either for free or $.99 each, just to have more books available to drive up name recognition? Would it be unethical to do so?
They may not have been assembling them as eBooks but a lot of bloggers have been reprinting their blog contents for some time now. And a lot of journalists and/or foundations are moving to publish, as "eBooks" expanded articles or a collection of articles. So I'd say this is already underway.
I would say that the term "digital download" is the best term for all the content that is designed through format or access to be read as a standalone item, and perhaps on a standalone device. For example, while I have some long meta posts too, I never designed them to be a particular type of reading experience. In fact, I think a lot of people have become writers or have written more because the online format has always seemed more ephemeral and thus more liberating because it doesn't generally demand the same careful attention to detail that used to be the province of officially published material. But lately even people who write comments online have gotten writing gigs from their efforts so you're certainly right that a lot of lines are blurring.