The eBook is 40 (1971-2011) Part 3

NAP (National Academy Press) was the first publisher in 1994 to post the full text of some books, with the authors' consent, as a way to promote their books among the 50,000 new books published per year in the U.S. NAP was followed by the MIT Press (MIT: Ma.s.sachusetts Inst.i.tute of Technology) in 1995.

NAP was created by the National Academy of Sciences to publish its own reports and the ones of the National Academy of Engineering, the Inst.i.tute of Medicine, and the National Research Council. In 1994, NAP was publishing 200 new books a year in science, engineering and health.

The publisher began posting full books for free, as suggested by their authors themselves, for people to browse them on the website before buying their print versions. Oddly enough, there was no drop in sales.

On the contrary, sales increased. Print books ordered online were 20% cheaper. There were also more sales by phone. In 1998, the NAP Reading Room offered 1,000 entire books, available online for free in "image"

format, HTML and PDF.

In 1995, MIT Press was publishing 200 new books per year and 40 journals, in science and technology, architecture, social theory, economics, cognitive science, and computational science. MIT Press also decided to put a number of books online for free, as "a long-term commitment to the efficient and creative use of new technologies".

Sales of print books with a free online version increased as well.

These initiatives were praised by a number of other publishers, who were reluctant to do the same, for three reasons: the cost of posting thousands of pages online, problems linked to copyright, and what they saw as a "compet.i.tion" between digital versions for free and print versions for a fee.

1995 > THE PRINT PRESS WENT ONLINE

[Summary]

The print press going online in the 1990s led the way to print books going online a few years later, thus the need for this chapter. The first electronic versions of print newspapers were available in the early 1990s through commercial services like America Online and CompuServe. In 1995, major newspapers like The New York Times, The Washington Post or The Wall Street Journal began offering websites with a partial or full version of their latest issue, as well as online archives. In the United Kingdom, the daily Times and the Sunday Times set up a common website called Times Online, with a way to create a personalized edition. The weekly publication The Economist went online too, as well as the daily Le Monde and Liberation in France, the daily El Pais in Spain, and the weekly Focus and Der Spiegel in Germany.

The print press going online in the 1990s led the way to print books going online a few years later, thus the need for this chapter.

The first electronic versions of print newspapers were available in the early 1990s through commercial services like America Online and CompuServe.

In 1995, newspapers began offering websites with a partial or full version of their latest issue, available freely or through subscription (free or paid), as well as online archives.

For example, The New York Times site could be accessed free of charge, with articles of the print daily, breaking news updated every ten minutes, and original reporting only available online. The site of The Washington Post gave the daily news online, with a full database of articles, with images, sound and videos. The site of The Wall Street Journal was available with a paid subscription, with 100,000 subscribers in 1998.

In the United Kingdom, the daily Times and the Sunday Times set up a common website called Times Online, with a way to create a personalized edition. The weekly publication The Economist went online too, as well as the daily Le Monde and Liberation in France, the daily El Pais in Spain, and the weekly Focus and Der Spiegel in Germany.

"More than 3,600 newspapers now publish on the internet", Eric K. Meyer stated in an essay published in late 1997 on the website of AJR/NewsLink. "A full 43% of all online newspapers now are based outside the United States. A year ago, only 29% of online newspapers were located abroad. Rapid growth, primarily in Canada, the United Kingdom, Norway, Brazil and Germany, has pushed the total number of non-U.S. online newspapers to 1,563. The number of U.S. newspapers online also has grown markedly, from 745 a year ago to 1,290 six months ago to 2,059 today. Outside the United States, the United Kingdom, with 294 online newspapers, and Canada, with 230, lead the way. In Canada, every province or territory now has at least one online newspaper.

Ontario leads the way with 91, Alberta has 44, and British Columbia has 43. Elsewhere in North America, Mexico has 51 online newspapers, 23 newspapers are online in Central America and 36 are online in the Caribbean. Europe is the next most wired continent for newspapers, with 728 online newspaper sites. After the United Kingdom, Norway has the next most -- 53 -- and Germany has 43. Asia (led by India) has 223 online newspapers, South America (led by Bolivia) has 161 and Africa (led by South Africa) has 53. Australia and other islands have 64 online newspapers."

The online versions of newspapers brought a wealth of information. The web provided readers not only with news available online, but also with a whole encyclopedia to help understand them. The reader could click on hyperlinks to get maps, biographies, official texts, political and economic data, photographs, as well as the first attempts in audio and video coverage. The reader could also easily access other articles on the same topic, with search engines sorting out articles by date, author, t.i.tle or subject.

1995 > AMAZON, A PIONEER IN CYBERCOMMERCE

[Summary]

Jeff Bezos launched Amazon.com in July 1995 in Seattle, on the West Coast, after a market study which led him to conclude that books were the best products to sell on the internet. The online bookstore started with 10 employees and a catalog of 3 million books. Unlike traditional bookstores, Amazon's windows were its webpages, with transactions made through the internet. Books were stored in huge storage facilities before being put into boxes and sent by mail. In November 2000, Amazon had 7,500 employees, a catalog of 28 million items, 23 million clients worldwide and four subsidiaries in United Kingdom (launched in August 1998), Germany (August 1998), France (August 2000), and j.a.pan (November 2000). A fifth subsidiary opened in Canada in June 2002. A sixth subsidiary, named Joyo, opened in China in September 2004. In July 2005, for its 10th anniversary, Amazon had 41 million clients and 9,000 employees.

Jeff Bezos launched Amazon.com in July 1995 in Seattle, on the West Coast, after a market study which led him to conclude that books were the best products to sell on the internet.

The online bookstore started with 10 employees and a catalog of 3 million books, i.e. the catalog of books available for sale in the U.S.

Unlike traditional bookstores, Amazon's windows were its webpages, with transactions made through the internet. Books were stored in huge storage facilities before being put into boxes and sent by mail.

What exactly was the idea behind Amazon.com? In spring 1994, Jeff Bezos drew up a list of twenty products that could be sold online, ranging from clothing to gardening tools, and then researched the top five, which were CDs, videos, computer hardware, computer software and books.

As recalled by Jeff Bezos in 1997 in Amazon's press kit: "I used a whole bunch of criteria to evaluate the potential of each product, but among the main criteria was the size of the relative markets. Books, I found out, were an $82 billion market worldwide. The price point was another major criterion: I wanted a low-priced product. I reasoned that since this was the first purchase many people would make online, it had to be non-threatening in size. A third criterion was the range of choice: there were 3 million items in the book category and only a tenth of that in CDs, for example. This was important because the wider the choice, the more the organizing and selection capabilities of the computer could be put in good use."

In the wake of the Internet Bookstore in United Kingdom, that was the largest online bookstore in Europe, Amazon.com launched is own a.s.sociates Program in spring 1997. There were 30,000 a.s.sociates in spring 1998, and 60,000 a.s.sociates in June 1998.

As stated in a press release dated 8 June 1998 to promote the program: "The Amazon.com a.s.sociates Program allows website owners to easily partic.i.p.ate in ha.s.sle-free electronic commerce by recommending books on their site and referring visitors to Amazon.com. In return, partic.i.p.ants earn referral fees of up to 15 percent of the sales they generate. Amazon.com handles the secure online ordering, customer service, and shipping and sends weekly email sales reports. Enrollment in the program is free, and partic.i.p.ants can be up and running the same day. a.s.sociates range from large and small businesses to nonprofits, authors, publishers, personal home pages, and more. The popularity of the program is reflected in the range of additions to the a.s.sociates Community in the past few months: Adobe, InfoBeat, Kemper Funds, PR Newswire, Travelocity, Virtual Vineyards, and Xoom."

People could search Amazon's online catalog by author, t.i.tle, subject, date or ISBN. The website offered excerpts from books, book reviews, customer reviews, and author interviews. People could "leaf" through extracts and reviews, order some books online, and pay with their credit card. Books arrived within a week at their doorstep. As an online retailer, Amazon could offer lower prices than local bookstores, a larger selection, and a wealth of product information. Customers could subscribe to a mailing list to get reviews of new books by their favorite authors, or new books in their favorite topics, with 44 topics to choose from. In 1998, Amazon was also selling CDs, DVDs, audio books and computer games, with 3 million clients in 160 countries.

Amazon's main compet.i.tor was the online bookstore of Barnes & n.o.ble, a major bookseller with 481 stores nationwide in 1997, in 48 states out of 50, as well as 520 B. Dalton stores in shopping malls. Barnes & n.o.ble first launched its America OnLine (AOL) website in March 1997, as the exclusive bookseller for the 12 million AOL customers, before launching its own website barnesandn.o.ble.com in May 1997 in partnership with Bertelsmann (Barnes & n.o.ble bought Bertelsmann's portion (36,8%) back for 164 million dollars in July 2003).

Barnes & n.o.ble's site offered significant discounts: 30% off all in- stock hardcovers, 20% off all in-stock paperbacks, 40% off select t.i.tles, and up to 90% off bargain books. Its Affiliate Network spread quickly, with 12,000 affiliate websites in May 1998, including CNN Interactive, Lycos and ZDNet. One year later, Barnes & n.o.ble.com launched a revamped website with a better design, an Express Lane one- click ordering, improved book search capabilities, and a new software "superstore". A fierce price war began with Amazon for the best book discounts, and Amazon.com came to be known as Amazon.toast, which didn't last. With a two-year head start, Amazon stayed ahead in the compet.i.tion.

Amazon launched its eBookStore in November 2000, three months after Barnes & n.o.ble, after partnering in August 2000 with Microsoft to sell ebooks for the Microsoft Reader, and with Adobe to offer ebooks for the Acrobat Reader and the Gla.s.sbook Reader -- Adobe had just bought Gla.s.sbook, its reader and its digital bookstore. In April 2001, Amazon.com partnered again with Adobe to include 2,000 copyrighted books for the Acrobat eBook Reader, mainly t.i.tles from major publishers, travel guides and children books.

In November 2000, Amazon had 7,500 employees, a catalog of 28 million items, 23 million clients worldwide and four subsidiaries in United Kingdom (launched in August 1998), Germany (August 1998), France (August 2000) and j.a.pan (November 2000). A fifth subsidiary opened in Canada in June 2002, and a sixth subsidiary, named Joyo, opened in China in September 2004. In July 2005, for its 10th anniversary, Amazon had 9,000 employees and 41 million clients.

1996 > THE INTERNET ARCHIVE, FOR FUTURE GENERATIONS

[Summary]

Founded in April 1996 by Brewster Kahle in San Francisco, California, the Internet Archive wanted to offer a permanent access of the web "through the ages" to present and future generations. In October 2001, with 30 billion stored webpages, the Internet Archive launched the Wayback Machine, for internet users throughout the world to be able to surf the archive of a given website by date. In 2004, there were 300 terabytes of data, with a growth of 12 terabytes per month. There were 65 billion webpages (from 50 million websites) in 2006, 85 billion webpages in 2008, and 150 billion webpages in March 2010. The Internet Archive has also defined itself as "a nonprofit digital library dedicated to providing universal access to human knowledge", building up an online library of text, audio, software, image and video content.

In October 2005, it launched the Open Content Alliance (OCA) with a number of partner organizations to build a universal digital library of multilingual digitized text and multimedia content.

Founded in April 1996 by Brewster Kahle, the Internet Archive wanted to offer permanent access of the web "through the ages" to present and future generations.

As explained on the website at the time, throughout history, societies have sought to preserve their culture and heritage for present and future generations, and libraries have been created to preserve the paper trail of that culture and legacy, and to facilitate its access to the general public and researchers. Therefore it seems essential to extend their mission to new technology. Paradoxically this was done poorly in the early 20th century. Many movies were recycled -- and thus lost forever -- to retrieve the silver layer. Many radio or TV programs were not saved. It is important not to repeat the same mistakes for the internet, especially for the web, a new medium the extent of which is still unknown in 1996. This is the raison d'etre of the Internet Archive, that has defined itself as "a nonprofit digital library dedicated to providing universal access to human knowledge."

The whole web was stored every two months or so on the servers of the Internet Archive in San Francisco, California, for researchers, historians and scholars to be able to access it.

In October 2001, with 30 billion stored webpages, the Internet Archive launched the Wayback Machine, for internet users throughout the world to be able to surf the archive of a given website by date.

In 2004, there were 300 terabytes of data, with a growth of 12 terabytes per month. There were 65 billion pages (from 50 million websites) in 2006, 85 billion pages in 2008, and 150 billion pages in March 2010.

In late 1999, the Internet Archive also became an online library of text, audio, software, image and video content, for example some books of the Million Book Project (10,520 books in April 2005), films for the period 1903-1973, live concerts, software, sites about September 11, sites about elections, and sites about the web pioneers, with all collections freely available on the web.

As a side remark, the Million Book Project, also called the Universal Library or Universal Digital Library (UDL), was launched in January 2000 by the Carnegie Mellon University (Pennsylvania) with the aim to digitize one million books in a number of languages, including in libraries from India and China. The project was completed in 2007, with one million books available on the university website, as image files in DjVu and TIFF formats, and three mirror sites (India, Northern China, Southern China).

In October 2005, the Internet Archive launched the Open Content Alliance (OCA) as a group of cultural, technology, non profit, and governmental organizations, with the aim to build a world public permanent archive of multilingual digitized text and multimedia content. The OCA started to digitize public domain books around the world, and to include them in the collection of the Internet Archive.