Meja Mwangi and Mwangi Ruheni are household names. For years their books have entertained readers whose passion is now going beyond the ordinary book format.

Their works will now be available as e-books, joining a growing list of books that have gone digital.

The East African Educational Publishers has digitalized Meja Mwangi's Carcass for Hounds and Ruheni's The Future Leaders and The Minister's Daughter.

Mr Muriuki Njeru, Vice Chairman, Kenya Publishers Association and also Managing Director of EAEP, says the e-books will be available in software formats and will be distributed either through email or Internet downloads, after payment.

They are books virtually available on the net to be read or downloaded. EAEP is still in the negotiation process and nothing conclusive has been reached, said Mr. Njeru.

"But we have so far partnered with a local company that will support online ordering, but as a publishing house we have already digitalized three books.

However, the publishing industry is facing some handicaps and Njeru says the government should encourage publishing houses to go into digital publishing, which although is a costly it remains an effective way of publishing compared to the traditional printing.

"Electronic books will help us transcend across geographical, cost and language barriers, which have been the most challenging factors affecting publishing in not only Kenya, but also the world," said Mr Kakai Karani, General Manager Longman Kenya.

Karani says that with online books, readers would be able to access the books through the Internet and where delivery of the hard copy would be difficult.

He says that the technology would have an impact on pricing.

"Ideally the smaller the print run the more expensive it is, but with the digital printing, publishers will able to print on demand, thereby producing the number of copies desired, we can even print 10 copies unlike the traditional means," says Mr. Karani.

But that can only happen if the banking sector takes steps allow e-commerce and payment which is still not well structured to guarantee that transactions got to the right recipients.

No one denies the Internet has opened incredible new doorways of accessibility to markets for writers and neither can one beat the fact that paperless mass production will be a reality, translating to the more affordable books for the readers in the long run.

Enthusiastic supporters of electronic publishing include writers, publishers, and readers familiar to this medium promptly point out that e-books are a win-win situation for all players.

"The electronic books are also bound to be less expensive, since the cost of production is also brought down drastically," confirmed Mr. Karani.

Flipping the coin, a major disadvantage of the electronic books is the lack of standard formats used today. Different hardware readers read the electronic information differently. This creates confusion for customers, since they must know which format to purchase in order to be able to read the e-book.

Many customers are not well versed enough in software applications to be able to know which e-books are compatable for their systems. This also creates difficulties for publishers in determining which formats to have available.

To significantly understand why standardization of formats is so important for electronic books, imagine you have visited a site, read an excerpt about what sounds like an excellent e-book, purchase it on-line, download it to your computer, only to discover you can't read it because you do not have the executable software program to open it.

You find out the software you require is free to download off the Net, but maybe you don't have enough available memory on your system, or maybe you don't have all the minimum hardware or software requirements to run it.

Or maybe you are so new to computers you're afraid you'll mess yours up by downloading and attempting to install software programs on it. Off course one would not have to worry about this if the book is already in its physical form.

Other publishing houses that have confirmed that they are in the process of digitizing their production are Longhorn Kenya and Jomo Kenyatta Foundation.