Among the earliest general e-books were those in the Gutenberg Project, started by Michael S. Hart in 1971. An early e-book implementation were the desktop prototypes for a proposed notebook computer, the Dynabook,The new Reader Library Software for PC and Mac let’s you shop for thousands of eBook titles including New York Times Bestsellers. You can also borrow books in the 1970s at PARC, which would be a general-purpose portable personal computer, including reading books.[2] Similar ideas were expressed at the same time by Paul Drucker.
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, The Cybook Opus combines feature rich quality, and the latest ebook reader technology in a compact, stylish and elegant design. 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 three e-book readers dominate the market, Amazon’s Kindle model or Sony’s PRS-500 and Bookeen with Cybook Gen3 and Cybook Opus[3]. On January 27, 2010 Apple, Inc. launched a multi-function device called the iPad[4] and announced agreements with five of the six largest publishers that would allow Apple to distribute e-books.[5] 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.[6][7]
[edit] Timeline
1971: Michael S. Hart launches the Gutenberg Project.
1985-1992 Robert Stein starts Voyager Company Expanded Books and books on CD-ROMs.
1992: Charles Stack’s Book Stacks Unlimited begins selling new physical books online.
1993: Zahur Klemath Zapata develops the first[citation needed] 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.
1994: Online poet Alexis Kirke discusses the need for wireless internet electronic paper readers in his article “The Emuse”.
1995: Amazon starts to sell physical books in Internet.
1996: Project Gutenberg reaches 1,000 titles. The target is 1,000,000
1998 Kim Blagg obtained the first ISBN issued to an ebook and began marketing multimedia-enhanced ebooks on CDs through retailers including amazon.com, bn.com and borders.com. Shortly thereafter through her company “Books OnScreen” she introduced the ebooks at the Book Expo America in Chicago, IL to an impressed, but unconvinced bookseller audience.
1998: Launched the first ebook Readers: Rocket ebook and SoftBook.
1998: Cybook / Cybook Gen1 Sold and manufactured at first by Cytale (1998–2003) then by Bookeen
1998-1999: Websites selling ebooks in English, like eReader.com and eReads.com.
1999: Baen Books opens up the Baen Free Library.
1999: Webscriptions starts selling unencrypted eBooks.
2000: Stephen King offers his book “Riding the Bullet” in digital file; it can only be read on a 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 buys Mobipocket.
2005: Bookboon.com is launched, allowing people to download free textbooks and travel guide eBooks
2006: Sony presents the Sony Reader with e-ink.
2006: LibreDigital launched BookBrowse as an online reader for publisher content.
2006: BooksOnBoard, the largest independent ebookstore, opens and sells ebooks and audiobooks in six different formats.
2007: Zahurk Technologies, Corp,launched the first[citation needed] digital book library on Internet 『BibliotecaKlemath.com’, 『loslibrosditales.com’ and 『digitalbook.us’
2007: Amazon launches Kindle in US.
2007: Bookeen launched Cybook Gen3 in Europe.
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: BooksOnBoard is first to sell ebooks for iPhones.
2009: myebook.com launches as a free ebook creation and publishing platform for media rich ebooks.[1]
2009: Bookeen releases the Cybook Opus in the US and in Europe.
2009: Amazon releases the Kindle 2.
2009: Amazon releases the Kindle DX in the US.
2009: Barnes & Noble releases the Nook in the US.
2009: Bookboon.com achieves over 10 Million downloads in one year – placing the company as the world’s largest publisher of free eBooks
2010: Amazon releases the Kindle DX International Edition worldwide.
2010: Bookeen reveals the Cybook Orizon at CES.[8]
2010: TurboSquid Magazine announces first magazine publication using Apple’s iTunes LP format.[9]