A Short History of EBooks Part 10

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The first pages were available in mid-2008. The encyclopedia should be fully "operational" in 2012 and completed with all known species in 2017. The English version will be translated in several languages by partner organizations. People will be able to use the encyclopedia as a "macroscope" to identify major trends from a considerable stock of information - in the same way they use a microscope for the study of detail.

2003: EBOOKS ARE SOLD WORLDWIDE

= [Overview]

First, publishers began to sell digital versions of their books online, on their own websites or on the new eBookstores of Amazon.com and Barnes & n.o.ble.com. In 2000, new online bookstores were created to sell "only" digital books (ebooks), like Palm Digital Media (renamed Palm eBook Store), Mobipocket or Numilog. At the same time, publishers were digitizing their books by the hundreds, while the public was getting used to read ebooks on computers, laptops, phones, smartphones and reading devices. 2003 was a turning point in an emerging market. More and more books were published simultaneously as a print book and a digital book, and thousands of new books, beginning with best-sellers, were sold as ebooks in various formats: PDF (to be read on Acrobat Reader, replaced by Adobe Reader), LIT (to be read on Microsoft Reader), PRC (to be read on Mobipocket Reader) and others, with the Open eBook format becoming a standard for ebooks.

= Books, from print to digital

The new online bookstores selling "only" digital books were also called aggregators because they were producing and selling ebooks from many publishers. It took them a few years (at least in Europe) to convince publishers that books should have two versions, print and digital, and to wait for the public to be ready to read on an electronic device, be it a computer, a laptop, a PDA, a mobile phone, a smartphone or a reading device. This emerging market took off in 2003, and more and more books were simultaneously published as a print book and a digital book.

In the 1990s, few people believed digital books would be commonplace in the near future. They thought people would still be attached to print books regardless of whatever happened, remembering this sentence of Robert Downs, a librarian who wrote in the 1980s: "My lifelong love affair with books and reading continues unaffected by automation, computers, and all other forms of the twentieth-century gadgetry." (excerpt from "Books in My Life", Library of Congress, 1985)

In an article published in February 1996 by the Swiss magazine "Informatique-Informations", Pierre Perroud, founder of the digital library Athena, explained that "electronic texts represent an encouragement to reading and a convivial partic.i.p.ation to culture dissemination", particularly for textual research and text study. These texts are "a good complement to the print book, which remains irreplaceable when for 'true' reading. (...) The book remains a mysteriously holy companion with profound symbolism for us: we grip it in our hands, we hold it against us, we look at it with admiration; its small size comforts us and its content impresses us; its fragility contains a density we are fascinated by; like man it fears water and fire, but it has the power to shelter man's thoughts from time."

Roberto Hernandez Montoya, an editor of the electronic magazine Venezuela a.n.a.litica, wrote in September 1998: "The printed text can't be replaced, at least not for the foreseeable future. The paper book is a tremendous 'machine'. We can't leaf through an electronic book in the same way as a paper book. On the other hand electronic use allows us to locate text chains more quickly. In a certain way we can more intensively read the electronic text, even with the inconvenience of reading on the screen. The electronic book is less expensive and can be more easily distributed worldwide (if we don't count the cost of the computer and the internet connection)."

In the 2000s, while many people still prefer reading a print book, more and more readers enjoy reading their ebooks on their notebook, smartphone or any other electronic device. They buy their ebooks online from Amazon, Barnes & n.o.ble, Yahoo, Palm, Mobipocket or Numilog.

In March 2000, Numilog was founded by Denis Zwirn near Paris, France, as a company specializing in the distribution of digital books. Numilog launched in September 2000 an online bookstore that became the main French-speaking aggregator of digital books over the years. Numilog has sold books and audiobooks in partners.h.i.+p with a number of publishers, including Gallimard, POL, Le Dilettante, Le Rocher, La Decouverte, De Vive Voix, Eyrolles or Pearson Education France.

Numilog was bought in May 2008 by Hachette Livre, a leading publis.h.i.+ng group.

= Adobe Reader

Adobe launched PDF (Portable Doc.u.ment Format) in June 1993, with Acrobat Reader (free, to read PDF doc.u.ments) and Adobe Acrobat (for a fee, to make PDF doc.u.ments). As the "veteran"

format, PDF was perfected over the years as a global standard for distribution and viewing of information. It "lets you capture and view robust information from any application, on any computer system and share it with anyone around the world.

Individuals, businesses, and government agencies everywhere trust and rely on Adobe PDF to communicate their ideas and vision" (excerpt from the website). Adobe Acrobat gave the tools to create and view PDF files, in several languages and for several platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux).

In August 2000, Adobe bought Gla.s.sbook, a company specializing in digital books software for publishers, booksellers, distributors and libraries. Adobe also partnered with Amazon.com and Barnes & n.o.ble.com to offer ebooks for the Acrobat Reader and the Gla.s.sbook Reader.

In January 2001, Adobe launched the Acrobat eBook Reader (free) and the Adobe Content Server (for a fee).

The Acrobat eBook Reader was used to read PDF files of copyrighted books, while adding notes and bookmarks, getting the book covers in a personal library, and browsing a dictionary.

The Adobe Content Server was intended for publishers and distributors for the packaging, protection, distribution and sale of copyrighted books in PDF format, while managing their access with DRM (Digital Rights Management), according to instructions given by the copyright holder, for example allowing or not the printing and loan of ebooks. (It was replaced with the Adobe LiveCycle Policy Server in November 2004.)

In April 2001, Adobe partnered with Amazon.com, for the online bookstore to include 2,000 copyrighted books for the Acrobat eBook Reader. These were t.i.tles of major publishers, travel guides, and children books.

The same year, the Acrobat Reader was available for PDAs, beginning with the Palm Pilot (May 2001) and the Pocket PC (December 2001).

Between 1993 and 2003, over 500 million copies of Acrobat Reader were downloaded worldwide. In 2003, Acrobat Reader was available in many languages and for many platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux, Palm OS, Pocket PC, Symbian OS, etc.).

Approximately 10% of the doc.u.ments on the internet were available in PDF.

In May 2003, Acrobat Reader (5th version) merged with Acrobat eBook Reader (2nd version) to become Adobe Reader (starting with version 6), which could read both standard PDF files and secure PDF files of copyrighted books.

In late 2003, Adobe opened its own online bookstore, the Digital Media Store, with t.i.tles in PDF format from major publishers (HarperCollins, Random House, Simon & Schuster, etc.) as well as electronic versions of newspapers and magazines like The New York Times, Popular Science, etc. Adobe also launched Adobe eBooks Central as a service to read, publish, sell and lend ebooks, and Adobe eBook Library as a prototype digital library.

= Open eBook and ePub

In 1999, there were nearly as many ebook formats as ebooks, with each new company creating its own format for its own ebook reader (software) and its own electronic device, for example the Gla.s.sbook Reader, the Peanut Reader, the Rocket eBook Reader (for the Rocket eBook), the Franklin Reader (for the eBookMan), the Cytale ebook reader (for the Cybook), the Gemstar eBook Reader (for the Gemstar eBook), the Palm Reader (for the Palm Pilot), etc.

The digital publis.h.i.+ng industry felt the need to work on a common format for ebooks. It released in September 1999 the first version of the Open eBook (OeB) format, based on XML (eXtensible Markup Language) and defined by the Open eBook Publication Structure (OeBPS). The Open eBook Forum was created in January 2000 to develop the OeB format and OeBPS specifications. Since 2000, most ebook formats were derived from - or are compatible with the OeB format, for example the PRC format from Mobipocket or the LIT format from Microsoft.

In April 2005, the Open eBook Forum became the International Digital Publis.h.i.+ng Forum (IDPF). The OeB format was replaced with the ePub format, a global standard for ebooks with PDF.

The PDF files created with recent versions of Adobe Acrobat are compatible with the ePub format.

= Microsoft Reader

Microsoft launched the Microsoft Reader in April 2000, for people to read books in LIT (from "literature") format on its new PDA, the Pocket PC. Four months later, in August 2000, the Microsoft Reader was available for computers, and then for any Windows platform, for example the platforms of the Tablets PC launched in November 2002.

Microsoft billed publishers and distributors for the use of its DRM technology through the Microsoft DAS Server, with a commission on each sale. Microsoft also partnered with major online bookstores - Barnes & n.o.ble.com in January 2000 and Amazon.com in August 2000 - for them to offer ebooks for the Microsoft Reader in eBookstores soon to be launched. Barnes & n.o.ble.com opened its eBookstore in August 2000, followed by Amazon in November 2000.

= Mobipocket Reader

Mobipocket was founded in March 2000 in Paris, France, by Thierry Brethes and Nathalie Ting, as a company specializing in ebooks for PDAs. The Mobipocket format (PRC, based on the OeB format) and the Mobipocket Reader were "universal" and could be used on any PDA - and also on any computer from April 2002.

They quickly became global standards for ebooks on mobile devices.

In October 2001, the Mobipocket Reader received the eBook Technology Award from the International Book Fair in Frankfurt.

Mobipocket partnered with Franklin for the Mobipocket Reader to be available on the eBookMan, Franklin's personal a.s.sistant, instead of the initially planned Microsoft Reader.

The Mobipocket Web Companion was a software (for a fee) for extracting content from partner news sites. The Mobipocket Publisher was used by individuals (free version for private use, and standard version for a fee) or publishers (professional version for a fee) to create ebooks using the Mobipocket DRM technology for controlling access to copyrighted ebooks. The Mobipocket Publisher could also create ebooks in LIT format for the Microsoft Reader.

In spring 2003, the Mobipocket Reader was available in several languages (French, English, German, Spanish, Italian) and could be used on any PDA and computer, and on the smartphones of Nokia and Sony Ericsson. 6,000 t.i.tles in several languages were available on Mobipocket's website and in partner online bookstores.

Mobipocket was bought by Amazon in April 2005. It now operates within the Amazon brand, with a multilingual catalog of 70,000 books in 2008.

2004: AUTHORS ARE CREATIVE ON THE NET

= [Overview]

Some authors have enjoyed creating websites, posting their works and communicating with readers by email. Other authors have begun searching how using hyperlinks could expand their writing towards new directions, while linking it to images and sound. Jean-Paul switched from being a print author to being an hypermedia author, while enjoying the freedom given by online (self-)publis.h.i.+ng: "The internet allows me to do without intermediaries such as record companies, publishers and distributors. Most of all, it allows me to crystallize what I have in my head: the print medium only allows me to partly do that. (...) Surfing the web is like radiating in all directions (I am interested in something and I click on all the links on a home page) or like jumping around (from one click to another, as the links appear). You can do this in the written media, of course. But the difference is striking. So the internet changed how I write. You don't write the same way for a website as you do for a script or a play."

= The internet as a research tool

Murray Suid is a writer of educational books and material living in Palo Alto, in the heart of Silicon Valley. He has also written books for kids, multimedia scripts and screenplays. How did using the internet change his professional life? He wrote in September 1998: "The internet has become my major research tool, largely - but not entirely - replacing the traditional library and even replacing person-to-person research. Now, instead of phoning people or interviewing them face to face, I do it via email. Because of speed, it has also enabled me to collaborate with people at a distance, particularly on screenplays. (I've worked with two producers in Germany.) Also, digital correspondence is so easy to store and organize, I find that I have easy access to information exchanged this way. Thus, emailing facilitates keeping track of ideas and materials. The internet has increased my correspondence dramatically. Like most people, I find that email works better than snail mail. My geographic range of correspondents has also increased - extending mainly to Europe.

In the old days, I hardly ever did transatlantic penpalling. I also find that emailing is so easy, I am able to find more time to a.s.sist other writers with their work - a kind of a virtual writing group. This isn't merely altruistic. I gain a lot when I give feedback. But before the internet, doing so was more of an effort."