Anebook (short forelectronic book), also spelled ase-book oreBook, is abook publication made available in electronic form, consisting of text, images, or both, readable on theflat-panel display of computers or other electronic devices.[1] Although sometimes defined as "an electronic version of a printed book",[2] some e-books exist without a printed equivalent. E-books can be read on dedicatede-reader devices, also on any computer device that features a controllable viewing screen, includingdesktop computers,laptops,tablets andsmartphones.
In the 2000s, there was a trend of print and e-book sales moving to theInternet,[3] where readers buy traditional paper books and e-books onwebsites usinge-commerce systems. With print books, readers are increasingly browsing throughimages of the covers of books on publisher or bookstore websites and selecting and ordering titles online. The paper books are then delivered to the reader by mail or any other delivery service. With e-books, users can browse through titles online, select and order titles, then the e-book can be sent to them online or the user can download the e-book.[4] By the early 2010s, e-books had begun to overtakehardcover by overall publication figures in the U.S.[5]
The main reasons people buy e-books are possibly because of lower prices, increased comfort (as they can buy from home or on the go with mobile devices) and a larger selection of titles.[6] With e-books, "electronicbookmarks make referencing easier, and e-book readers may allow the user to annotate pages."[7] "Although fiction and non-fiction books come in e-book formats, technical material is especially suited for e-book delivery because it can be digitally searched" for keywords. In addition, for programming books, code examples can be copied.[7] In the U.S., the amount of e-book reading is increasing. By 2014, 28% of adults had read an e-book, compared to 23% in 2013. By 2014, 50% of American adults had ane-reader or atablet, compared to 30% owning such devices in 2013.[8]
Besides published books and magazines that have a digital equivalent, there are alsodigital textbooks that are intended to serve as the text for a class and help in technology-based education.
E-books are also referred to as "ebooks", "e-books", "eBooks", "Ebooks", "e-Books", "e-journals", "e-editions", or "digital books". A device that is designed specifically for reading e-books is called an "e-reader", "ebook device", or "eReader".
Some trace the concept of an e-reader, a device that would enable the user to view books on a screen, to a 1930 manifesto byBob Brown, written after watching his first "talkie" (movie with sound). He titled itThe Readies, playing off the idea of the "talkie".[9] In his book, Brown says movies have outmaneuvered the book by creating the "talkies" and, as a result, reading should find a new medium:
A simple reading machine which I can carry or move around, attach to any old electric light plug and read hundred-thousand-word novels in 10 minutes if I want to, and I want to.
Brown's notion, however, was much more focused on reformingorthography and vocabulary, than on medium. He says: "It is time to pull out the stopper" and begin "a bloody revolution of the word," introducing huge numbers ofportmanteau symbols to replace normal words, and punctuation to simulate action or movement, so it is not clear whether this fits into the history of "e-books" or not. Later e-readers never followed a model at all like Brown's. However, he correctly predicted the miniaturization and portability of e-readers. In an article, Jennifer Schuessler writes: "The machine, Brown argued, would allow readers to adjust the type size, avoid paper cuts and save trees, all while hastening the day when words could be 'recorded directly on the palpitating ether.'"[10] Brown believed that the e-reader (and his notions for changing the text itself) would bring a completely new life to reading. Schuessler correlates it with aDJ spinning bits of old songs to create a beat or an entirely new song, as opposed to just a remix of a familiar song.[10]
The first e-book may be theIndex Thomisticus, a heavily annotated electronic index to the works ofThomas Aquinas, prepared byRoberto Busa, S.J. beginning in 1946 and completed in the 1970s.[11] Although originally stored on a single computer, a distributable CD-ROM version appeared in 1989. However, this work is sometimes omitted. Maybe this is because the digitized text was a means for studying written texts and developing linguistic concordances, rather than as a published edition in its own right.[12] In 2005, the Index was published online.[13]
In 1949,Ángela Ruiz Robles, a teacher fromFerrol, Spain, patented theEnciclopedia Mecánica, or the Mechanical Encyclopedia, a mechanical device which operated on compressed air where text and graphics were contained on spools that users would load onto rotating spindles. Her idea was to create a device which would decrease the number of books that her pupils carried to school. The final device was planned to include audio recordings, a magnifying glass, a calculator, and an electric light for night reading.[14] Her device was never put into production but a prototype is on display at theNational Museum of Science and Technology inA Coruña.[15]
Alternatively, some historians consider electronic books to have started in the early 1960s, with theNLS project headed byDouglas Engelbart atStanford Research Institute (SRI), and theHypertext Editing System andFRESS projects headed byAndries van Dam atBrown University.[16][17][18] FRESS documents ran on IBM main frames and were structure-oriented rather than line-oriented. They were formatted dynamically for different users, display hardware, window sizes, and so on, as well as having automated tables of contents, indexes, and so on. All these systems also provided extensivehyperlinking, graphics, and other capabilities. Van Dam is generally thought to have coined the term "electronic book",[19][20] and it was established enough to use in an article title by 1985.[21]
FRESS was used for reading extensive primary texts online, as well as for annotation and online discussions in several courses, including English Poetry and Biochemistry. Brown's faculty made extensive use of FRESS. For example the philosopherRoderick Chisholm used it to produce several of his books. Thus in the Preface toPerson and Object (1979) he writes: "The book would not have been completed without the epoch-making File Retrieval and Editing System..."[22] Brown University's work in electronic book systems continued for many years, includingUS Navy funded projects for electronic repair-manuals;[23] a large-scale distributed hypermedia system known as InterMedia;[24] a spinoff company Electronic Book Technologies that builtDynaText, the firstSGML-based e-reader system; and the Scholarly Technology Group's extensive work on theOpen eBook standard.
Despite the extensive earlier history, several publications reportMichael S. Hart as the inventor of the e-book.[25][26][27] In 1971, the operators of the Xerox Sigma V mainframe at theUniversity of Illinois gave Hart extensive computer time. Seeking a worthy use of this resource, he created his first electronic document by typing theUnited States Declaration of Independence into a computer in plain text.[28] Hart planned to create documents using plain text to make them as easy as possible to download and view on devices. After Hart first adapted the U.S. Declaration of Independence into an electronic document in 1971,Project Gutenberg was launched to create electronic copies of more texts, especially books.[28]
Dedicated hardware devices for ebook reading began to appear in the 70s and 80s, in addition to the main frame and laptop solutions, and collections of data per se. One early e-book implementation was the desktop prototype for a proposed notebook computer, theDynabook, in the 1970s atPARC: a general-purpose portable personal computer capable of displaying books for reading.[29] In 1980, theU.S. Department of Defense began a concept development for a portable electronic delivery device for technical maintenance information called project PEAM, the Portable Electronic Aid for Maintenance. Detailed specifications were completed inFY 1981/82, and prototype development began withTexas Instruments that same year. Four prototypes were produced and delivered for testing in 1986, and tests were completed in 1987. The final summary report was produced in 1989 by the U.S. Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences, authored by Robert Wisher andJ. Peter Kincaid.[30] A patent application for the PEAM device,[31] titled "Apparatus for delivering procedural type instructions", was submitted by Texas Instruments on December 4, 1985, listing John K. Harkins and Stephen H. Morriss as inventors.
The first portable electronic book, the US Department of Defense's "Personal Electronic Aid to Maintenance"
In 1992,Sony launched theData Discman, an electronic book reader that could read e-books that were stored on CDs. One of the electronic publications that could be played on the Data Discman was calledLibrary of the Future.[32] 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.[citation needed] In the 1990s, the general availability of theInternet made transferring electronic files much easier, including e-books.[citation needed]
In 1993, Paul Baim released a freewareHyperCard stack, called EBook, that allowed easy import of any text file to create a pageable version similar to an electronic paperback book. A notable feature was automatic tracking of the last page read so that on returning to the 'book' you were taken back to where you had previously left off reading. The title of this stack may have helped popularize the term 'ebook'.[33]
As e-book formats emerged and proliferated,[citation needed] some garnered support from major software companies, such asAdobe with itsPDF format that was introduced in 1993.[34] Unlike most other formats, PDF documents are generally tied to a particular dimension and layout, rather than adjusting dynamically to the current page, window, or another size. Different e-reader devices followed different formats, most of them accepting books in only one or a few formats, thereby fragmenting the e-book market even more. Due to the exclusiveness and limited readerships of e-books, the fractured market of independent publishers and specialty authors lacked consensus regarding a standard for packaging and selling e-books.[citation needed]
Meanwhile, scholars formed theText Encoding Initiative, which developed consensus guidelines for encoding books and other materials of scholarly interest for a variety of analytic uses as well as reading. Countless literary and other works have been developed using the TEI approach. In the late 1990s, a consortium formed to develop theOpen eBook format as a way for authors and publishers to provide a single source-document which many book-reading software and hardware platforms could handle. Several scholars from the TEI were closely involved in the early development ofOpen eBook, includingAllen Renear,Elli Mylonas, andSteven DeRose, all from Brown. Focused on portability, Open eBook as defined required subsets ofXHTML andCSS; a set of multimedia formats (others could be used, but there must also be a fallback in one of the required formats), and anXML schema for a "manifest", to list the components of a given e-book, identify a table of contents, cover art, and so on.[citation needed] This format led to the open formatEPUB.Google Books has converted manypublic domain works to this open format.[35]
In 2010, e-books continued to gain in their own specialist and underground markets.[citation needed] Many e-book publishers began distributing books that were in thepublic domain.[36] At the same time, authors with books that were not accepted by publishers offered their works online so they could be seen by others.[36] Unofficial (and occasionally unauthorized) catalogs of books became available on the web, and sites devoted to e-books began disseminating information about e-books to the public.[37] Nearly two-thirds of the U.S. Consumer e-book publishing market are controlled by the "Big Five". The "Big Five" publishers are:Hachette,HarperCollins,Macmillan,Penguin Random House andSimon & Schuster.[38]
U.S. libraries began to offer free e-books to the public in 1998 through their websites and associated services,[39] 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 ane-book lending model that worked much more successfully for public libraries.[40] The number of library e-book distributors and lending models continued to increase over the next few years. From 2005 to 2008, libraries experienced a 60% growth in e-book collections.[41] In 2010, a Public Library Funding and Technology Access Study by theAmerican Library Association[42] found that 66% of public libraries in the U.S. were offering e-books,[43] and a large movement in the library industry began to seriously examine the issues relating to e-book lending, acknowledging a "tipping point" when e-book technology would become widely established.[44] Content from public libraries can be downloaded to e-readers usingapplication software likeOverdrive andHoopla.[45]
TheU.S. National Library of Medicine has for many years providedPubMed, a comprehensive bibliography of medical literature. In early 2000, NLM set up thePubMed Central repository, which stores full-text e-book versions of many medical journal articles and books, through co-operation with scholars and publishers in the field. Pubmed Central also now provides archiving and access to over 4.1 million articles, maintained in a standardXML format known as theJournal Article Tag Suite (JATS).
Despite the widespread adoption of e-books, some publishers and authors have not endorsed the concept ofelectronic publishing, citing issues with user demand,copyright infringement and challenges with proprietary devices and systems.[46] In a survey ofinterlibrary loan (ILL) librarians, it was found that 92% of libraries held e-books in their collections and that 27% of those libraries had negotiated ILL rights for some of their e-books. This survey found significant barriers to conducting interlibrary loan for e-books.[47]Patron-driven acquisition (PDA) has been available for several years in public libraries, allowing vendors to streamline the acquisition process by offering to match a library's selection profile to the vendor's e-book titles.[48] The library's catalog is then populated with records for all of the e-books that match the profile.[48] The decision to purchase the title is left to the patrons, although the library can set purchasing conditions such as a maximum price and purchasing caps so that the dedicated funds are spent according to the library's budget.[48] The 2012 meeting of theAssociation of American University Presses included a panel on the PDA of books produced by university presses, based on a preliminary report by Joseph Esposito, a digital publishing consultant who has studied the implications of PDA with a grant from theAndrew W. Mellon Foundation.[49]
Although the demand for e-book services in libraries has grown in the first two decades of the 21st century, difficulties keep libraries from providing some e-books to clients.[50] Publishers will sell e-books to libraries, but in most cases they will only give libraries a limited license to the title, meaning that the library does notown the electronic text but is allowed to circulate it for either a certain period of time, or a certain number of check outs, or both. When a library purchases an e-book license, the cost is at least three times what it would be for a personal consumer.[50] E-book licenses are more expensive than paper-format editions because publishers are concerned that an e-book that is sold could theoretically be read and/or checked out by a huge number of users, potentially damaging sales. However, some studies have found the opposite effect to be true (for example, Hilton and Wikey 2010).[51]
Ane-reader, also called ane-book reader ore-book device, is amobile electronic device that is designed primarily for the purpose of readinge-books and digital periodicals. An e-reader is similar in form, but more limited in purpose than atablet. In comparison to tablets, many e-readers are better than tablets for reading because they are more portable, have better readability in sunlight and have longer battery life.[52] In July 2010, online booksellerAmazon.com reported sales of e-books for its proprietaryKindle, outnumbered sales ofhardcover books for the first time ever during the secondquarter of 2010, saying it sold 140 e-books for every 100 hardcover books, including hardcovers for which there was nodigital edition.[53] By January 2011, e-book sales at Amazon had surpassed its paperback sales.[54] In the overall US market, paperback book sales are still much larger than either hardcover or e-book. The American Publishing Association estimated e-books represented 8.5% of sales as of mid-2010, up from 3% a year before.[55] At the end of the first quarter of 2012, e-book sales in the United States surpassed hardcover book sales for the first time.[5]
Until late 2013, use of an e-reader was not allowed on airplanes during takeoff and landing by theFAA.[56] In November 2013, the FAA allowed use of e-readers on airplanes at all times if it is in Airplane Mode, which means all radios turned off, and Europe followed this guidance the next month.[57] In 2014,The New York Times predicted that by 2018 e-books will make up over 50% of total consumer publishing revenue in the United States and Great Britain.[58]
Judy Malloy writes and programmes the first onlinehypertext fiction,Uncle Roger, with links that take the narrative in different directions depending on the reader's choice.[61]
1989
Franklin Computer releases an electronic edition of theBible that can only be read with a stand-alone device.[62]
Electronic Book Technologies releasesDynaText, the first SGML-based system for delivering large-scale books such as aircraft technical manuals. It was later tested on a US aircraft carrier as replacement for paper manuals.[citation needed]
Apple starts using its Doc Viewer[69] format "to distribute documentation to developers in an electronic form",[70] which effectively meantInside Macintosh books.
1993
Peter James publishes his novelHost on twofloppy disks, which at the time was called the "world's first electronic novel", a copy of it is stored at theScience Museum.[71]
More than two dozen volumes of Inside Macintosh are published[74] together on a single CD-ROM in Apple Doc Viewer format. Apple subsequently switches to usingAdobe Acrobat.[75]
The popular format for publishing e-books changes from plain text toHTML.
Nuvo Media releases the first handheld e-reader, theRocket eBook.[80]
SoftBook launches its SoftBook reader. This e-reader, with expandable storage, could store up to 100,000 pages of content, including text, graphics and pictures.[81]
TheCybook is sold and manufactured at first byCytale (1998–2003) and later byBookeen.
1999
TheNIST releases theOpen eBook format based onXML to the public domain; most future e-book formats derive from Open eBook.[82]
PublisherSimon & Schuster creates a new imprint called iBooks and becomes the first trade publisher to simultaneously publish some of its titles in e-book and print format.
Oxford University Press makes a selection of its books available as e-books through netLibrary.
Kim Blagg, via her company Books OnScreen, begins selling multimedia-enhanced e-books on CDs through retailers includingAmazon,Barnes & Noble andBorders.[84]
Joseph Jacobson, Barrett O. Comiskey and Jonathan D. Albert are grantedUS patents related to displaying electronic books, these patents are later used in the displays for most e-readers.[85]
Stephen King releases his novellaRiding the Bullet exclusively online and it became the first mass-market e-book, selling 500,000 copies in 48 hours.[86]
Adobe releases Adobe Acrobat Reader 5.0 allowing users to underline, take notes and bookmark.
2002
Palm, Inc andOverDrive, Inc make Palm Reader e-books available worldwide, offering over 5,000 e-books in several languages; these could be read on Palm PDAs or using a computer application.[89]
In November,Amazon.com releases theKindle e-reader with 6-inch E Ink screen in the US and it sells outs in 5.5 hours.[96] Simultaneously, theKindle Store opens, with initially more than 88,000 e-books available.[96]
October –Kobo Inc. releases an updated Kobo eReader, which includes Wi-Fi capability.
November –The Sentimentalists wins the prestigious nationalGiller Prize in Canada; due to the small scale of the novel's publisher, the book is not widely available in printed form, so the e-book edition becomes the top-selling title onKobo devices for 2010.[103]
November – Barnes & Noble releases theNook Color, a color LCD tablet.
December – Google launchesGoogle eBooks offering over three million titles, becoming the world's largest e-book store to date.[104]
2011
May – Amazon.com announces that its e-book sales in the US now exceed all of its printed book sales.[105]
June/November – As the e-reader market grows in Spain, companies like Telefónica, Fnac, and Casa del Libro launch their e-readers with the Spanish brand "bq readers".
November – Amazon launches theKindle Fire andKindle Touch, both devices designed for e-reading.
2012
E-book sales in the US market collect over three billion in revenue.[109]
January – Apple releasesiBooks Author, software for creatingiPad e-books to be directly published in itsiBooks bookstore or to be shared asPDF files.[110]
February – Nature Publishing announces the worldwide release ofPrinciples of Biology, following the success of the pilot version some months earlier.[108]
February –Library.nu (previously called ebooksclub.org and gigapedia.com, a popular linking website for downloading e-books) is accused ofcopyright infringement and closed down by court order.[112]
March – PocketBook releases the PocketBook Touch, an E Ink Pearl e-reader, winning awards from German magazinesTablet PC andComputer Bild.[116][117]
June – Kbuuk releases thecloud-based e-book self-publishingSaaS platform[118] on thePubsoft digital publishing engine.
September – Amazon releases theKindle Paperwhite, its first e-reader with built-in front LED lights.
2013
April – Kobo releases theKobo Aura HD with a 6.8-inch screen, which is larger than the current models produced by its US competitors.[119]
May –Mofibo launches the first Scandinavian unlimited access e-book subscription service.[120]
June –Association of American Publishers announces that e-books now account for about 20% of book sales. Barnes & Noble estimates it has a 27% share of the US e-book market.[121]
June – Barnes & Noble announces its intention to discontinue manufacturing Nook tablets, but to continue producing black-and-white e-readers such as the Nook Simple Touch.[121]
June – Apple executive Keith Moerer testifies in the e-book price fixing trial that the iBookstore held approximately 20% of the e-book market share in the United States within the months after launch – a figure thatPublishers Weekly reports is roughly double many of the previous estimates made by third parties. Moerer further testified that iBookstore acquired about an additional 20% by adding Random House in 2011.[122]
A Kobo Aura's settings menu
Five major US e-book publishers, as part of their settlement of a price-fixing suit, are ordered to refund about $3 for every electronic copy of a New York Times best-seller that they sold from April 2010 to May 2012.[109] This could equal $160 million in settlement charges.
Barnes & Noble releases theNook Glowlight, which has a 6-inch touchscreen using E Ink Pearl and Regal, with built-in front LED lights.
July – US District Court JudgeDenise Cote finds Apple guilty of conspiring to raise the retail price of e-books and schedules a trial in 2014 to determine damages.[123]
August – Kobo releases theKobo Aura, a baseline touchscreen six-inch e-reader.
September –Oyster launches its unlimited access e-book subscription service.[124]
November – US District Judge Chin sides with Google inAuthors Guild v. Google, citing fair use.[125] The authors said they would appeal.[126]
December –Scribd launches the first public unlimited access subscription service for e-books.[127]
2014
April – Kobo releases theAura H₂0, the world's firstwaterproof commercially produced e-reader.[128]
June – US District Court Judge Cote grants class action certification to plaintiffs in a lawsuit over Apple's alleged e-book price conspiracy; the plaintiffs are seeking $840 million in damages.[129] Apple appeals the decision.
June – Apple settles the e-book antitrust case that alleged Apple conspired to e-book price fixing out of court with the States; however if Judge Cote's ruling is overturned in appeal the settlement would be reversed.[130]
July – Amazon launchesKindle Unlimited, an unlimited-access e-book and audiobook subscription service.[131]
2015
June – The 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals with a 2:1 vote concurs with Judge Cote that Apple conspired to e-book price fixing and violated federal antitrust law.[132] Apple appealed the decision.
September – Oyster announces its unlimited access e-book subscription service would be shut down in early 2016 and that it would be acquired by Google.[134]
September – Malaysian e-book company,e-Sentral, introduces for the first time geo-location distribution technology for e-books via bluetooth beacon. It was first demonstrated in a large scale at Kuala Lumpur International Airport.[135]
October – Amazon releases theKindle Voyage that has a 6-inch, 300 ppi E Ink Carta HD display, which was the highest resolution and contrast available in e-readers as of 2014.[136] It also features adaptive LED lights and page turn sensors on the sides of the device.
October – Barnes & Noble releases theGlowlight Plus, its first waterproof e-reader.[137]
October – The US appeals court sides with Google instead of the Authors' Guild, declaring that Google did not violate copyright law in its book scanning project.[138]
December – Playster launches an unlimited-access subscription service including e-books and audiobooks.[139]
By the end of 2015, Google Books scanned more than 25 million books.[10]
By 2015, over 70 million e-readers had been shipped worldwide.[10]
2016
March – TheSupreme Court of the United States declines to hear Apple's appeal against the court's decision of July 2013 that the company conspired to e-book price fixing, hence the previous court decision stands, obliging Apple to pay $450 million.[140]
April – The Supreme Court declines to hear the Authors Guild's appeal of its book scanning case, so the lower court's decision stands; the result means that Google can scan library books and display snippets in search results without violating US copyright law.[141]
April – Amazon releases theKindle Oasis, its first e-reader in five years to have physical page turn buttons and, as apremium product, it includes a leather case with a battery inside; without including the case, it is the lightest e-reader on the market to date.[142]
August – Kobo releases theAura One, the first commercial e-reader with a 7.8-inch E Ink Carta HD display.[143]
By the end of the year, smartphones and tablets have both individually overtaken e-readers as methods for reading an e-book, and paperback book sales are now higher than e-book sales.[144]
2017
February – TheAssociation of American Publishers releases data showing that the US adult e-book market declined 16.9% in the first nine months of 2016 over the same period in 2015, and Nielsen Book determines that the e-book market had an overall total decline of 16% in 2016 over 2015, including all age groups.[145] This decline is partly due to widespread e-book price increases by major publishers, which has increased the average e-book price from $6 to almost $10.[146]
February – The US version of Kindle Unlimited comprises more than 1.5 million titles, including over 290,000 foreign language titles.[147]
March –The Guardian reports that sales of physical books are outperforming digital titles in the UK, since it can be cheaper to buy the physical version of a book when compared to the digital version due to Amazon's deal with publishers that allows agency pricing.[144]
April – TheLos Angeles Times reports that, in 2016, sales of hardcover books were higher than e-books for the first time in five years.[146]
October – Amazon releases the Oasis 2, the first Kindle to beIPX8 rated meaning that it is water resistant up to 2 meters for up to 60 minutes; it is also the first Kindle to enable white text on a black background, a feature that may be helpful for nighttime reading.
2018
January – U.S. public libraries report record-breaking borrowing of OverDrive e-books over the course of the year, with more than 274 million e-books loaned to card holders, a 22% increase over the 2017 figure.[148]
October – The EU allowed its member countries to charge the sameVAT for ebooks as for paper books.[149]
2019
May – Barnes & Noble releases the GlowLight Plus e-reader, the largest Nook e-reader to date with a 7.8-inch E Ink screen.[150]
Writers and publishers have many formats to choose from when publishing e-books. Each format has advantages and disadvantages. The most popular e-readers[151] and their natively supported formats are shown below:
Most e-book publishers do not warn their customers about the possible implications of thedigital rights management tied to their products. Generally, they claim that digital rights management is meant to prevent illegal copying of the e-book. However, in many cases, it is also possible that digital rights management will result in the complete denial of access by the purchaser to the e-book.[161] The e-books sold by most major publishers and electronic retailers, which areAmazon.com,Google,Barnes & Noble,Kobo Inc. andApple Inc., are DRM-protected and tied to the publisher'se-reader software or hardware. The first major publisher to omit DRM wasTor Books, one of the largest publishers of science fiction and fantasy, in 2012. Smaller e-book publishers such asO'Reilly Media, Carina Press andBaen Books had already forgone DRM previously.[162]
Some e-books are produced simultaneously with the production of a printed format, as described inelectronic publishing, though in many instances they may not be put on sale until later. Often, e-books are produced from pre-existinghard-copy books, generally bydocument scanning, sometimes with the use ofrobotic book scanners, having the technology to quickly scan books without damaging the original print edition. Scanning a book produces a set of image files, which may additionally be converted into text format by anOCR program.[163] Occasionally, as in some projects, an e-book may be produced by re-entering the text from a keyboard. Sometimes only the electronic version of a book is produced by the publisher.[example needed] It is possible to release an e-book chapter by chapter as each chapter is written.[example needed] This is useful in fields such asinformation technology where topics can change quickly in the months that it takes to write a typical book. It is also possible to convert an electronic book to a printed book byprint on demand. However, these are exceptions as tradition dictates that a book be launched in the print format and later if the author wishes an electronic version is produced.The New York Times keeps a list of best-selling e-books, for both fiction[164] and non-fiction.[165]
All of the e-readers and reading apps are capable of tracking e-book reading data, and what the data could contain which e-books users open, how long the users spend reading each e-book and how much of each e-book is finished.[166] In December 2014,Kobo released e-book reading data collected from over 21 million of its users worldwide. Some of the results were that only 44.4% ofUK readers finished the bestselling e-bookThe Goldfinch and the 2014 top selling e-book in the UK, "One Cold Night", was finished by 69% of readers. This is evidence that while popular e-books are being completely read, some e-books are only sampled.[167]
iLiad e-book reader equipped with an e-paper display visible in sunlight
In the space that a comparably sized physical book takes up, an e-reader can contain thousands of e-books, limited only by its memory capacity. Depending on the device, an e-book may be readable in low light or even total darkness. Many e-readers have a built-in light source, can enlarge or change fonts, usetext-to-speech software to read the text aloud for visually impaired, elderly ordyslexic people or just for convenience.[168] Additionally, e-readers allow readers to look up words or find more information about the topic immediately using an online dictionary.[169][170][171] Amazon reports that 85% of its e-book readers look up a word while reading.[172]
A 2017 study found that even when accounting for the emissions created in manufacturing the e-reader device, substituting more than 4.7 print books a year resulted in lessgreenhouse gas emissions than print.[173] While an e-reader costs more than most individual books, e-books may have a lower cost than paper books.[174] E-books may be made available for less than the price of traditional books usingon-demand book printers.[175] Moreover, numerous e-books are available online free of charge on sites such asProject Gutenberg.[176] For example, all books printed before 1928 are in thepublic domain in the United States, which enables websites to host ebook versions of such titles for free.[177]
Depending on possibledigital rights management, e-books (unlike physical books) can be backed up and recovered in the case of loss or damage to the device on which they are stored, a new copy can be downloaded without incurring an additional cost from the distributor. Readers can synchronize their reading location, highlights and bookmarks across several devices.[178]
Thespine of the printed book is an important aspect inbook design and is seen as part of its beauty as an object.
There may be a lack ofprivacy for the user's e-book reading activities. For example, Amazon knows the user's identity, what the user is reading, whether the user has finished the book, what page the user is on, how long the user has spent on each page, and which passages the user may have highlighted.[179] One obstacle to wide adoption of the e-book is that a large portion of people value the printed book as an object itself, including aspects such as the texture, smell, weight and appearance on the shelf.[180] Print books are also considered valuable cultural items, and symbols ofliberal education and thehumanities.[181]Kobo found that 60% of e-books that are purchased from their e-book store are never opened and found that the more expensive the book is, the more likely the reader would at least open the e-book.[182]
Joe Queenan has written about the pros and cons of e-books:
Electronic books are ideal for people who value the information contained in them, or who have vision problems, or who like to read on the subway, or who do not want other people to see how they are amusing themselves, or who have storage and clutter issues, but they are useless for people who are engaged in an intense, lifelong love affair with books. Books that we can touch; books that we can smell; books that we can depend on.[183]
Apart from all the emotional and habitual aspects, there are also some readability and usability issues that need to be addressed by publishers and software developers. Many e-book readers who complain about eyestrain, lack of overview and distractions could be helped if they could use a more suitable device or a more user-friendly reading application, but when they buy or borrow a DRM-protected e-book, they often have to read the book on the default device or application, even if it has insufficient functionality.[184]
While a paper book is vulnerable to various threats, including water damage, mold and theft, e-books files may be corrupted, deleted or otherwise lost as well aspirated. Where the ownership of a paper book is fairly straightforward (albeit subject to restrictions on renting or copying pages, depending on the book), the purchaser of an e-book's digital file has conditional access with the possible loss of access to the e-book due todigital rights management provisions, copyright issues, the provider's business failing or possibly if the user's credit card expired.[185]
According to the Association of American Publishers 2018 annual report, ebooks accounted for 12.4% of the total trade revenue.[186]
Publishers of books in all formats made $22.6 billion in print form and $2.04 billion in e-books, according to the Association of American Publishers' annual report 2019.[187]
According toNielsen Book Research, e-book share went up from 20% to 33% between 2012 and 2014, but down to 29% in the first quarter of 2015. Amazon-published and self-published titles accounted for 17 million of those books (worth £58m) in 2014, representing 5% of the overall book market and 15% of the digital market. The volume and value sales, although similar to 2013, had seen a 70% increase since 2012.[190]
The Brazilian e-book market is only emerging. Brazilians are technology savvy, and that attitude is shared by the government.[191] In 2013, around 2.5% of all trade titles sold were in digital format. This was a 400% growth over 2012 when only 0.5% of trade titles were digital. In 2014, the growth was slower, and Brazil had 3.5% of its trade titles being sold as e-books.[191]
Public domain books are those whose copyrights have expired, meaning they can be copied, edited, and sold freely without restrictions.[192] Many of these books can be downloaded for free from websites like theInternet Archive, in formats that many e-readers support, such asPDF,TXT, andEPUB. Books in other formats may be converted to an e-reader-compatible format using e-book writing software, for exampleCalibre.
^Gardiner, Eileen and Ronald G. Musto. "The Electronic Book." In Suarez, Michael Felix, and H. R. Woudhuysen.The Oxford Companion to the Book.Archived September 12, 2019, at theWayback Machine Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010, p. 164.
^"e-book".Oxford Dictionaries. Oxford University Press. Archived fromthe original on February 8, 2011. RetrievedSeptember 2, 2010.
^abDeRose, Steven J; van Dam, Andries (1999). "Document Structure and Markup in the FRESS Hypertext System".Markup Languages.1 (1):7–32.doi:10.1162/109966299751940814.
^abCarmody, Steven; Gross, Walter; Nelson, Theodor H; Rice, David; van Dam, Andries (1969), "A Hypertext Editing System for the /360", in Faiman; Nievergelt (eds.),Pertinent Concepts in Computer Graphics: Proceedings of the Second 17 University of Illinois Conference on Computer Graphics, University of Illinois Press, pp. 291–330.
^abvan Dam, Andries; Rice, David E (1970),Computers and Publishing: Writing, Editing and Printing, Advances in Computers, Academic Press, pp. 145–74.
^"An experimental system for creating and presenting interactive graphical documents." ACM Transactions on Graphics 1(1), Jan. 1982
^Nicole Yankelovich; Norman K. Meyrowitz; Andries van Dam (1985). "Reading and Writing the Electronic Book".Computer. Vol. 18, no. 10. pp. 15–30.doi:10.2200/S00215ED1V01Y200907ICR009.
^Genco, Barbara. "It's been Geometric!Archived October 6, 2010, at theWayback Machine Documenting the Growth and Acceptance of eBooks in America's Urban Public Libraries."IFLA Conference, July 2009.
^Saylor, Michael (2012).The Mobile Wave: How Mobile Intelligence Will Change Everything. Vanguard Press. p. 124.ISBN978-1-59315-720-3.
^Gutermann, Jimmy, 'Hypertext Before the Web,'Chicago Tribune, April 8, 1999
^Coburn, M.; Burrows, P.; Loi, D.; Wilkins, L. (2001). Cope, B.; Kalantzis, D. Melbourne (eds.). "E-book readers directions in enabling technologies".Print and Electronic Text Convergence. Common Ground. pp. 145–182.
^Pearson, David (2006). Bowman, J (ed.).British Librarianship and Information Work 1991–2000: Rare book librarianship and historical bibliography. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Ltd. p. 178.ISBN978-0-7546-4779-9.
^Catan, Thomas; Trachtenberg, Jeffrey A. (March 9, 2012)."U.S. Warns Apple, Publishers". Wall Street Journal.Archived from the original on January 8, 2015. RetrievedMarch 9, 2012.
^Fortunati, L.; Vincent, J. (2014). "Sociological Insights into writing/reading on paper and writing/reading digitally".Telematics and Informatics.31 (1):39–51.doi:10.1016/j.tele.2013.02.005.
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