Transcript The Birth of eBooks

The Birth
of eBooks
A short evolution
by Phillipa Mitchell
Red Pepper Books
The History of eBooks
Michael Hart – “That crazy guy
who wants to put Shakespeare
into a computer”
Project Gutenberg
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1971 – Michael Hart typed US Declaration of
Independence into the University of Illinois computer
mainframe
Launched Project Gutenberg – A project to create
electronic versions of literary works and distribute them,
free of charge, worldwide
All of these books were in the public domain – their
copyright had fallen away and anyone could reproduce
them
17 years to type in 313 literary works including The Bible,
Alice in Wonderland and all of Shakespeare’s works
Sent out on stiffy and, in later years, on CD-ROM, and
finally on to the World Wide Web in the early 1990s
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In 1998, After 17 years of going it alone, Michael Hart
linked up with the University of Illinois PC User Group
By the end of 1998 he had over 10 000 volunteers and
1600 eBooks had been keyed in!
eTexts renamed eBooks
These were all published on the Internet
In 2008 there were close on 3 million recorded eBook
downloads from Project Gutenberg in ONE MONTH alone
Michael got some help
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The Online Books Page was founded in 1993 by Mark
Ockerbloom
It was a portal that listed most of the free eBooks
available across the Web (Project Gutenberg’s included)
Included books, media, art, video, magazines, serials,
newspapers and published journals
By 1998 there were 7000 titles indexed and searchable
by title, author or subject
Today, 12 years later, around 40 000 eBooks
have been indexed
The Online Books Page
The Internet was growing into a
HUGE online encyclopaedia
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books, electronic versions of magazines
and newspapers made available online
 By 1997 more than 3600 newspapers were being
published online worldwide
 43% of these were published OUTSIDE the USA
 In 1997 South Africa had 53 online newspapers –
Mail & Guardian and The Star
 Europe: 728 online newspaper sites in 1997
 Search engines were sorting all this information for
us by date, author, title or subject
Information is available in
many languages
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In the beginning, the Internet was almost 100% English
By the late 1990s 15% of the Internet was in a language
other than English
English to remain the main language for most types of
EXCHANGES but people preferred to read in their own
language
Non-English speaking countries saw the importance of
making their web sites available in English
Web sites in multiple languages
Wikipedia – the free encyclopedia
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Founded in 2001 and now the largest free reference source/
encyclopedia on the Internet
Run purely on donations with NO advertising
A collaboration of people from all over the world all writing under
pseudonyms
Web site is a wiki (meaning “quick” in Hawaiian) where anyone can
edit, correct and improve the content
No original content is allowed! It must all be referenced to the
original source e.g. book or research paper where the information
was originally published
Discussion page where opinions can be expressed, but this is
separate from the main knowledge base
By 2007 Wikipedia had 7 million articles spanning 192
languages
1.8 million of these articles published in English
Google Print and Google Books
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In 2004 Google launched Google Print, a partnership with publishers to make
excerpts of their books available online – Springer, T&F and many more
Also launched the Google Print Library Project – To scan and digitise old
collections of books sitting in libraries that barely saw the light of day
Aim was both to protect these books from extinction through natural disasters as
well as to make them available to the general public
By 2006, operating as Google Books, they were scanning up to 3000 books a
day from numerous participating university libraries
Currently over 7 million scanned books can be browsed
5 million of these books are out of print
If the book is in the public domain (out of copyright), or the publisher has given
Google permission, you'll be able to see a preview of the book, and in some
cases the entire text.
There are currently about 1 million books that can be freely downloaded as a
PDF
Snippets of information are available for books that are not out of copyright with
links to online bookstores where they can be purchased, or rented
Here’s what it looks like:
1. Book result on Google.com
2. Book page on Book Search
3. Snippet view of in-copyright book
4. Full view of out of copyright book
Current copyright law
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Books published before 1923 are freely available
without copyright
Books published between 1923 and 1977 cannot
enter the public domain for 75 years - in other
words only in 2019
Books published from 1978 onwards can only
enter the public domain 95 years after the date of
publication - in other words, only in 2074
The result? Very few books that could freely
be published in the public domain
Amazon.com is the first online
bookstore
•Jeff Bezos decided that books were the most
popular items that could be sold online
•Founded Amazon.com in 1995
•Started with 10 staff members and a catalogue of
3 million books
•Ten years later Amazon had 9000 employees and
41 million customers across the globe
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In 2003, readers were able to use the “Search inside this
book” function after having scanned over 120 000 books
Users were able to read sample chapters and reader
reviews before making a purchase
Found that it cut down on the amount of people returning
books because it “wasn’t what they were looking for”
Because there are always going to be freeloaders,
Amazon is now looking at implementing a charge to view
system with discounts to those who actually go ahead and
purchase books after previewing them!
Launched their own e-reading device, The Kindle, in 2007
Launched the new and improved Kindle II in 2009
Amazon.com
The success story continues
eBooks are sold worldwide
 By
2003 more and more books published in both
print and digital format
 It was usually the bestsellers that went from print to
digital first
 Online bookstores selling only eBooks springing up
everywhere + regular online bookstores offering
digital alternatives
 Aggregators convinced publishers to publish both in
print and digitally
 These aggregators would obtain the
rights to sell the eBook version to this
growing market
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Because PDAs and Smartphones were growing in
popularity in the late 1990s, people were starting to
also use these devices to read eBooks, many of them
using the Microsoft Reader as their eBook reader
Microsoft partnered with Amazon and Barnes & Noble
so that they could offer eBooks in Microsoft Reader
format
Mobipocket launched their reader (the Mobipocket
reader) which could be used to read eBooks on
almost every PDA and later, on any computer
The Mobipocket reader became the global
standard for reading eBooks on mobile devices
Microsoft Reader and
Mobipocket
Better technology = more people
experimenting with e-readers
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Usability and display technology of e-readers has improved
over time, especially in the past 3-5 years
More devices started using eInk (Electronic Ink) technology:
text would display in a similar way to the way text would
appear on paper
Easier reading = growing popularity towards e-readers
Some people still dubious about e-reading devices…
Peter Raggett, head of the Central Library at the OECD, wrote
"I also hope that electronic books will be waterproof so that I
can continue reading in the bath"
Steven Krauwer, coordinator of ELSNET, wrote that
"ebooks still had a long way to go before reading
from a screen feels as comfortable as reading
a book“
The Kindle
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Lightweight and portable - Weighs in at 272g
Hold it like a book
Designed purely for reading books (and other
media such as newspapers)
The new Kindle 2 is priced at $259 (R2500)
Stores up to 2GB of files – 3500 eBooks
All your books are backed up on Amazon.com
Has over 660 000 free and paid books, including many self published works not
available through mainstream bookstores
1 week battery life
Can be read equally well indoors or outside in bright sunlight – no glare
Text to speech facility
Comes with “New Oxford Dictionary” installed with and the meanings of over
250 000 words can be looked up on screen
Previews of upcoming books
Ability to buy books on the go with bestsellers starting at $9.99 (R70) and
newspapers in the region of $2 - $4 (R15-R30) each
The Apple iPad
The iPad
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New generation of e-readers = Tablets
More of a full multimedia experience than simply for
people who want a digital substitute for the
physical book
Weighs in at 700g
Not as portable as the Kindle
Display in full colour – great for eBooks with
lots of colour graphics especially children’s
books
Stores up to 16GB of files
8-10 hours of battery life
Priced from $499 to $629 (R5 500 upwards)
View two pages at a time by rotating the screen to landscape
Touch and hold any word to look it up in the built-in dictionary or on
Wikipedia or elsewhere in the book
Change the text size or the font
Built-in screen reader which will read the page to you
Approximately 60 000 eBooks currently available
30 000 free books – all courtesy of Project Gutenberg
More suitable for reading indoors
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Schwarzenegger wanted to replace
expensive textbooks with digital
textbooks
The “termination” of print textbooks
in schools?
Ran trials in 2010 at University of
Wisconsin but got a thumbs down
from frustrated students
Couldn’t make notes in margins or
highlight, and paging backwards
and forwards was cumbersome
Assumption is that the plan may
have been abandoned as no
concrete evidence of it having been
launched
eTextbooks in Schools?
Digital textbooks (eTextbooks)
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Current market for digital textbooks is small, especially in South Africa
In the USA digital textbook sales currently only account for ½ a percent
of all textbook sales
Trend is expected to grow in the future
Xplana study shows that 1 out of 5 textbooks will be digital by the year
2014 (not all textbooks will have a digital counterpart)
Evidence of a steady move towards purchasing digital textbooks –
100% growth in sales year on year since 2008
In USA digital textbooks selling for half the price of print textbooks
Not so in South Africa
Publishers will be forced to create low-cost alternatives to print books
Growth will be driven by:
1. The increasing availability of tablets, e-readers and netbooks
2. Availability and pricing of eTextbook content
3. Increased interest in online learning – with institutions
integrating more online learning material into courses
Libraries go digital
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By 1998 most libraries had created web sites as virtual
windows to their libraries
First official library web site created by the Helsinki City
Library in Finland in 2004
Patrons could browse the library’s print collection, often being
able to view the full digital text of a title without taking it off the
shelf
This went a long way in preserving the shelf life of a book
Online user catalogues (OPACs) were much easier to search
and use when compared to card catalogue drawers – just
type search terms and press enter!
Interlibrary loaning became simpler
Physical librarians were becoming “virtual” librarians
with less face to face interaction
 Libraries
start giving more
priority to expanding their
eBook collections
 Are
we moving towards
the empty library?
2008Growth of eBook collections
in libraries
Ebrary –
an eBook platform for libraries
• Add your eBook
collection to your
library’s home
page
• Access is all
online and
available 24/7
• Conduct a search of
books available in
your eBook
collection by entering
either a keyword, a
subject, an author’s
name (etc.)
• Open a book by
clicking on the title or
jacket. No
downloads required
Explore the document by navigating to search terms, searching for
keywords, jumping to relevant chapters,
and flipping through pages
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Use the highlight
function to highlight
important points
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Take notes and
transform this text into
hyperlinks connecting
the page to other online
resources
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Copy and paste text
*Citations are
automatically created
when you do this,
linking the citation back
to the source document
Books, highlights and notes can be dragged into
bookshelf folders which can then be emailed to
fellow researchers or students
Additional Features
 Upload
documents, papers and theses from your
repository – creating dynamic archives from your
content
 Free MARC records
 Text to speech
 Usage reports (documents/ pages viewed, pages
copied, pages printed – per day, week or month)
Highwire Press (Stanford University)
2009 Librarian eBook Survey
 Online
survey conducted by surveymonkey.com
 138 libraries from 13 countries involved (2 from
South Africa)
Results
2009 Librarian eBook Survey
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Large budget for digital resources but only a small
percentage being spent on eBooks
44% said they had fewer than 10 000 eBooks in their
collections (perpetual and subscription)
When using the product, the key factor was SIMPLICITY
Relevant titles to match the institution’s needs
Digital rights management - Being able to view and print
entire chapters
Availability of MARC records
Integrating eBooks into existing print book
acquisition and cataloguing systems
Challenges
2009 Librarian eBook Survey
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Difficulty in reading content on screen
Some models offer limited users at once
The cost of multiple licences (on some models) for heavily
used books
Slow to move from page to page – print book easier when
questions needed to be answered quickly
A lack of availability by interlibrary loan
Connectivity issues for students without Internet access
Text to speech for visually impaired students
Simultaneous availability of both the physical book and
the e-book
Why eBooks are growing in
popularity at academic institutions
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Dynamic content – hand-picked, new material is being
added all the time
Low distribution costs
Remote access by multiple users
Inherent multimedia possibilities (trailers, interviews,
actors reciting poems in the book, etc.)
Highlighting quotes and passages and being able to
share them with fellow researchers and students
Note facility – no more illegible scribbling
Search for topics and keywords
Look up of words and terms
Reporting features
Conclusion
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Even though the format of the book has evolved so much over time,
there is one thing that hasn’t changed: the content itself
What HAS changed is how content is delivered
One type of content will never completely replace another, not in our
lifetime anyway!
There will always be those who prefer the physical book to the digital
book, or in the same token, the audio book to the physical book
Many will want to experiment with new technologies such as e-reading
devices, but the novelty may or may not wear off!
eBooks are best suited for research and study purposes where the
user needs to find specific information – they are not necessarily going
to read the book from cover to cover
Print books will always have their place for the more focussed reader
We have all this technology at our disposal – acknowledge it, get
excited about it, purchase it and experiment with it – just don’t
get left behind!
Phillipa Mitchell
Red Pepper Books
e:[email protected]
t: 011-958-2474
w: www.redpepperbooks.co.za