E-book readers: it’s your week this week!

It may just have escaped your notice, but yesterday marked the start of the “read an e-book week”. The aim of the week is, of course, to celebrate and stimulate electronic reading.

E-books may be older than you think. Although the massive proliferation of e-books is a very recent affair indeed, the e-book celebrates its 40th birthday this year. In 1971, in the days that computers themselves were rare, Michael Hart used a computer to make a digital copy of the American Declaration of Independence, the first e-book of sorts. Hart’s flash of brilliance, an idea that in the age of Google seems all too common, was that the utility of computers would not just be the power to make complex calculations. Rather, he foresaw that considerable value would lie in storing and retrieving data: facilitating the access to knowledge. 

Since that time, e-books have come a long way. They account for an increasing percentage of book sales, with Amazon’s Jeff Bezos indicating that 60% of their books are sold in a digital format. E-book library lending is also becoming increasingly popular. And then there are the sources of free titles, such as Project Gutenberg. This repository for books on which copyright has expended now hosts over 20.000 free books, which are downloaded about 3 million times each month.

While last year and the next, iPads and tablets are the focus of attention for consuming digital content, dedicated e-readers are also going strong. Amazon enjoys a great success with their Kindles, their proprietary format. Sony, producer of the e-readers favoured by leading Dutch digital vendor bol.com, is taking a different course and provides a more open platform. Supporting formats like PDF and the open ebook standard ePub makes the reader a versatile reading platform.

Source: ebookweek