How e-books changed the publishing industry. The concept of electronic books or e-books has been around for a while now, early contraptions were being designed and made since the late 1930s. In 1971, Michael S. Hart created the first electronic document by typing the US declaration of Independence on his computer in text format so that the document could be viewed on other devices. The e-book reading devices were meant to store technical or reference documents which would have become too heavy if printed as paper books for the intended users. During this time, most of the projects related to e-books were undertaken at the behest of the government agencies. Sharing of documents became easier with the Internet services being introduced in the late 1980s and e-book Readers became more reader friendly. In 1992, Sony introduced the ‘Data Discman’ which could read books stored on CDs. The cost of this device then was more than USD 500, which was too high for it to be viable and was discontinued within a couple of years.
e-Book reading devices like Kindle, iBooks, Nook, Kobo etc. soon became popular as alternatives to paper books. The reasons for this change of habit are several, e-books are cheaper, extremely portable, customizable in terms of font and color, each device can store hundreds of titles/books, saving of space, users can also index information, get details about other books from their favourite authors or download sample chapters. These devices are literally putting the library or the bookstore in our hands, and all this without moving out of our chair. From the long-term perspective one can also argue about the environmental benefits of adopting e-books, as no paper and no transportation is required for e-book publishing. How have the publishing houses dealt with this onslaught of technology? Publishers have been using digital technologies for writing, proofreading, graphic designing and printing for quite some time. However, what has really changed in the last decade is the impact of these technologies on the way we communicate, promote, market and especially the way that we read digital content. The omnipresence of the smartphones and internet means that we have easy access to our preferred choice of digital content.