History of the eBook: 50 years of utopia?
Nowadays, the eBook has become part of our everyday life. While not everyone has an eBook Reader at home or uses it regularly, the tendency to store and read texts in electronic format is now commonplace.
Precisely because of the constant evolution of formats and types of media, it is rather difficult to trace a definite genesis. There are, however, a few pivotal episodes that can give the idea.
1971: the beginnings of the eBook
Project Gutenberg was launched, the brainchild of computer scientist Michael Hart. The project envisaged collecting all possible books, in an electronic version, thus preserving the book heritage of mankind. The United States Declaration of Independence, which Hart carried in his backpack, became the project’s first book in electronic format. Project Gutenberg, whose slogan is ‘to break the barriers of illiteracy ignorance’, has reached a stock of more than 60,000 eBooks in 2020. All books contained therein are in the public domain, or whose rights have expired, or whose authors have granted their use to the project. All Project Gutenberg eBooks are available for free, as long as the content is not altered.
1998: the first eBook readers
Rocket eBook and Softbook eBook readers are introduced onto the market. These were the very first readers on the market; the Softbook even had an internal modem to connect to the Internet and download eBooks!
2000: the turning point
The pivotal year in the history of eBooks and, in some ways, the beginning of the decline. On 14 March 2000, Stephen King published his new novel ‘Riding The Bullet’, making it available only in electronic format. The book, published by major online stores such as Amazon, SimonSays and NetLibrary at two and a half dollars, was downloaded over half a million times in a few days. It is precisely from the controversy over illegal downloading of copies that spread in the following months that the decline in popularity of the eBook can be glimpsed. The enthusiasm aroused by the new technology began to wane, also due to the gaps in copyright protection. The fact that the technology does not live up to readers’ expectations of convenience proves to be a serious deterrent. E-ink technology, in fact, had already been invented in 1996, but had not yet reached the versatility to be applied to sophisticated readers.
After 2000: the expansion of eBooks
The eBook, however, did not stop. In the following years, more and more sophisticated readers started to come out and in 2008, many advanced models were released, such as the Kindle, Cybook, Plastic Logic and Polymer Vision. The market began to take off and international stores saw more and more products in digital format.
Also in 2008, in Italy, the eBook is the protagonist for the first time at the Rome Book Fair. In Italy, the market had a record growth of 197 per cent compared to December 2007 and captured a 3 per cent share of the worldwide eBook market. In the meantime, two major eBook distribution projects are developed: Google Books in the United States and Europeana on our continent.
2009 is described by many industry experts as ‘the year of eBooks’. Even major American newspapers begin to push the potential of digital publishing to try to stem the crisis of printed paper.
It began a process that continues to this day…
The COVID-19 pandemic gave digital publishing a further boost. Travel restrictions caused demand for eBooks and audio books to soar, while the Internet kept us connected to each other by overcoming lockdown barriers. In Italy, too, this phenomenon occurred, as we have already written, and 2021 seems to see the definitive establishment of this trend.
According to three surveys presented on 21 June 2021 in Milan, during the event organised by BookCity Milano, Intesa Sanpaolo and Aie, the eBook market grew by 43%, compared to +0.3% for paper. Furthermore, 2021 is confirmed as the year of podcasts and young readers.
