An e-book (short for electronic book, also written eBook or ebook) is an e-text that forms the digital media equivalent of a conventional printed book, sometimes protected with a digital rights management system. E-books are usually read on personal computers or smart phones, or on dedicated hardware devices known as e-Readers or e-book devices. Many mobile phones can also be used to read e-books.
Early e-books were generally written for specialty areas and a limited audience, meant to be read only by small and devoted interest groups. The scope of the subject matter of these e-books included technical manuals for hardware, manufacturing techniques, and other subjects.
Numerous e-book formats emerged and proliferated, some supported by major software companies such as Adobe’s PDF format, and others supported by independent and open-source programmers. Multiple readers naturally followed multiple formats, most of them specializing in only one format, and thereby fragmenting the e-book market even more. Due to exclusiveness and limited readerships of e-books, the fractured market of independents and specialty authors lacked consensus regarding a standard for packaging and selling e-books. E-books continued to gain in their own underground markets. Many e-book publishers began distributing books that were in the public domain. At the same time, authors with books that were not accepted by publishers offered their works online so they could be seen by others. Unofficial (and occasionally unauthorized) catalogs of books became available over the web, and sites devoted to e-books began disseminating information about e-books to the public.
As of 2009[update], new marketing models for e-books were being developed and dedicated reading hardware was produced. E-books (as opposed to ebook readers) have yet to achieve global distribution. Only two e-book readers dominate the market, Amazon’s Kindle model or Sony’s PRS-500. However, not all authors have endorsed the concept of electronic publishing. J.K Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series, has stated that there will be no e-versions of her books.[2][3]
- 1971: Michael S. Hart launches the Gutenberg Project.
- 1985-1992 Bob Stein starts Voyager Company Expanded Books and books on CD-ROMs.
- 1993: Zahur Klemath Zapata develops the first software to read digital books. Digital Book v.1 and the first digital book is published On Murder Considered as one of the Fine Arts (Thomas de Quincey).
- 1993: Digital Book, Inc. offers the first 50 digital books in Floppy disk with Digital Book Format (DBF).
- 1993: Hugo Award for Best Novel nominee texts published on CD-ROM by Brad Templeton.
- 1993: Bibliobytes, a project of free digital books online in Internet.
- 1995: Amazon starts to sell physical books in Internet.
- 1996: Project Gutenberg reaches 1.000 titles. The target is 1.000.000
- 1998: Launched the first ebook Readers: Rocket ebook and Softbook.
- 1998-1999: Websites selling ebooks in English, like eReader.com and eReads.com.
- 2000: Stephen King offers his book “Riding the Bullet” in digital file, it only can be read in computer.
- 2001: Todoebook.com, the first website selling ebooks in Spanish.
- 2002: Random House and HarperCollins start to sell digital versions of their titles in English.
- 2005: Amazon bought Mobipocket like a strategic positioning.
- 2006: Sony presents the Sony Reader with e-ink.
- 2006: LibreDigital launched BookBrowse as an online reader for publisher content.
- 2007: Zahurk Technologies, Corp,launched the first digital book library on Internet ‘BibliotecaKlemath.com’, ‘loslibrosditales.com’ and ‘digitalbook.us’
- 2007: Amazon launched Kindle in US.
- 2008: Adobe and Sony agreed to share their technologies (Reader and DRM).
- 2008: Sony sells the Sony Reader PRS-505 in UK and France
- 2008: Amazon launched Kindle 2 in US.
- 2009: Amazon releases the Kindle DX in the US.
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