History Of E-Reader and E-Book

Among the earliest general e-reader were those in Project Gutenberg, started by Michael S. Hart in 1971. An early e-book implementation were the desktop prototypes for a proposed notebook computer, the Dynabook, in the 1970s at PARC, which would be a general-purpose portable personal computer, including reading books. parallel thoughts were articulated at the same time by Paul Drucker.

Early e-books were commonly written for specialty areas and a limited people, intended to be read only by small and devoted interest groups. The scope of the subject matter of these e-books included technological manuals for hardware, manufacturing techniques and other subjects. In the 1990s, the general availability of the Internet made transferring electronic files much easier, including e-books.


Frequent e-book formats emerged and proliferated, some supported by major software companies such as Adobe with its PDF format, and others supported by independent and open-source programmers. Multiple readers 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 nonstop to grow in their own dissident 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.


U.S. Libraries began to offer free e-books to the public in 1998 through their web sites and associated services, although the e-books were primarily scholarly, technical or professional in nature, and could not be downloaded. In 2003, libraries began offering free downloadable popular fiction and non-fiction e-books to the public, launching an e-book lending model that worked much more successfully for public libraries. The number of library e-book distributors and lending models continued to increase over the next few years. In 2010, a Public Library Funding and Technology Access Study found that 66% of public libraries in the U.S. were offering e-books, and a large movement in the library industry began seriously examining the issues related to lending e-books, acknowledging a tipping point of broad e-book usage.


As of 2009, 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. In the United States, as of September 2009, the Amazon Kindle model and Sony's PRS-500 were the dominant ereading devices. By March 2010, some reported that the Barnes & Noble Nook may be selling more units than the Kindle. On January 27, 2010 Apple, Inc. launched a multi-function device called the iPad and announced agreements with five of the six largest publishers that would allow Apple to distribute e-books. However, many publishers and authors have not endorsed the concept of electronic publishing, citing issues with demand, piracy and proprietary devices.