= [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 & Noble.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
participation 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 Hernández Montoya, an editor of the electronic magazine
Venezuela Analítica, 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 & Noble, 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 partnership with a number of publishers,
including Gallimard, POL, Le Dilettante, Le Rocher, La
Découverte, De Vive Voix, Eyrolles or Pearson Education France.
Numilog was bought in May 2008 by Hachette Livre, a leading
publishing group.
= Adobe Reader
Adobe launched PDF (Portable Document Format) in June 1993,
with Acrobat Reader (free, to read PDF documents) and Adobe
Acrobat (for a fee, to make PDF documents). 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 Glassbook, a company specializing
in digital books software for publishers, booksellers,
distributors and libraries. Adobe also partnered with
Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.com to offer ebooks for the
Acrobat Reader and the Glassbook 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 titles 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 documents 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 titles 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 Glassbook 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 publishing 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 Publishing 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 & Noble.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 &
Noble.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 assistant,
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 titles 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.