Tuesday, November 2, 2010

The history of e-book

A brief history of e-book is:

- In 1971, the first "e-book" was born. Michael Hart was the creator of this innovation and founder of the Project Gutenberg of lllinois University, a public library of digital books, which houses 20,000 free books, and over 100,000 books are available through their partners.

-In 1981, the first e-book with commercial aims (a dictionary by Random House) was launched on the market.

-In 1998, the first e-book Fair took place in Gaithersburg, Maryland in the U.S. At this event, the Norm Open e-book, a series of regulations to standardize the format of electronic publication was presented. Moreover, libraries began to pay attention to e-book in this year when NetLibrary, a Colorado-based firm began to provide content.

-In 1999, the specification Open e-book Publication Structure was established, which set HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) and XML (Extensible Markup Language) as the stnndard platforms for this type of books.

-In 2001, the e-books boom started when "Riding the Bullet", a Stephen King' s well-known novel, was launched exclusively on the internet. This digital work was a resounding success, with a great amount of copies sold in only 2 days at a very affordable cost-$2.50.

Additionally, one of the first genres to become successful in the e-book field was that of the romance story. Because e-book romances were easy to shop for and easy to read, so romance novels were perfect for e-books.

14 comments:

  1. Nattee, It's great that you provide a brief history of eBook! It seems the development of eBook mainly depends on technology advancement.

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  2. Nattee, it's good about a brief history of e-book. I look forward more information. Thanks for sharing.

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  3. Hi Nattee:

    Thank you for providing us with a brief history of the e-book. I am a huge Stephen King fan, so it is was great to read that one of his novels contributed to the success of the e-book franchise.

    ~Aja

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  4. Hi Nattee,
    Thank you for provided a brief history about E-book. For me, I heard about E-book when I learned in secondary school (in 2000)and I do like it so when I am a teacher, I use E-book for teaching my grade one students. They really enjoyed and excited everytime I open next page. Moreover, I created E-book that I teach by myself :) I put the videos adn sounds inside it and students love it.

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  5. I had no idea there were E-books in the 1970s, I am curious what types of books were created then. I remember hearing about Riding the Bullet when it was first being sold digitally but I didn't realize it was the start of E-book boom. I am curious where e-books will go in the future

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  6. Hi Nattee:
    I found the article below on what is happening with e-textbooks in South Korea: http://chronicle.com/blogs/college20/author/jyoung

    September 21, 2010, 5:32 pm

    What South Korean Schoolchildren Can Teach Colleges About E-Textbooks
    By Jeff Young


    Seoul, South Korea—Many textbooks at Osandaewon Elementary School here are digital, and many classrooms feature a laptop on every desk. The school is part of a major e-textbook experiment run by the South Korean government, and it offers lessons for colleges looking to replace printed class materials with electronic ones.

    Last week the school invited a small group of participants from the e-Learning Week 2010 conference to see the e-textbooks in action, and I was able to tag along. After a snack of tea and cookies served by mothers dressed in hanbok, we were allowed to briefly watch four different classes of students using the e-textbooks.

    The classrooms looked like a TV ad for a technology company—the sixth-grade students happily clicked away on laptops, while their teachers showed video clips and PowerPoint presentations on a large touch-screen computer monitor built into the…

    Read More: http://chronicle.com/blogs/college20/what-south-korean-schoolchildren-can-teach-colleges-about-e-textbooks/27085

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  7. Among the earliest general e-books were those in the Gutenberg Project, started by Michael S. Hart in 1971.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-book#History

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  8. SALES OF EBOOKS

    EBook for Pocket PC: 3
    EBook for Adobe Reader: 179
    Audio CD: 318
    Audio Cassette: 1,126
    Mass Market Paperback: 1,575
    Large Print for the visually impaired: 1,918

    The conclusion? Ebook sales are better than all other editions, except hardcover.

    http://www.selfpublishebooks.com/ebook-sales.html

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  9. Brother Thinnakorn!
    Thanks for your comment. I agree with you that e-book progressive depends on technology advancement because e-book is the digital book.

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  10. Pei Ratana!
    Thanks for your comment. I'm very glad to hear that you want to follow my blog posting.

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  11. Hi Aja!
    Thanks for your comment. I was very surprised to know you are the Stephen King fan, and thanks for your sharing e-textbooks. Again Thanks for your kindness.

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  12. Aiabramo!
    Thanks for your comment. I agree with you that the future of e-book is very interesting to know.

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  13. Benjamas!
    Thanks for your comment. I think you will be the e-book expert in the future because I feel that you like it very much and try to cereat it by yourself.

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  14. Sirinuch!
    Thank you for your sharing more about e-book knowledge in my blog. It's very useful for everyone.

    ReplyDelete