Produced by Al Haines

A SHORT HISTORY OF EBOOKS

MARIE LEBERT

NEF, University of Toronto, 2009

—-
This book is dedicated to all those
who kindly answered my questions during ten years,
in Europe, in America (the whole continent),
in Africa, and in Asia.
with many thanks for their time and their friendship.
—-

A short history of ebooks - also called digital books - from the first ebook in 1971 until now, with Project Gutenberg, Amazon, Adobe, Mobipocket, Google Books, the Internet Archive, and many others. This book is based on 100 interviews conducted worldwide and thousands of hours of web surfing during ten years.

This book is also available in French and Spanish, with a longer and different text. All versions can be found online <http://www.etudes-francaises.net/dossiers/ebook.htm>.

Marie Lebert is a researcher and editor specializing in technology for books, other media, and languages. She is the author of "Technology and Books for All" (in English and French, 2008), "Les mutations du livre" (Mutations of the Book, in French, 2007) and "Le Livre 010101" (The 010101 Book, in French, 2003). Her books are published by NEF (Net des études françaises / Net of French Studies), University of Toronto, Canada, and are freely available online <http://www.etudes- francaises.net>.

Many thanks to Greg Chamberlain, Laurie Chamberlain, Kimberly Chung, Mike Cook, Michael Hart and Russon Wooldridge for revising previous versions of some parts, and many thanks to Al Haines for proofreading this ebook.