For educational, academic and scientific publications, online publishing became a cheaper solution than print books, with regular updates to include the latest information. Readers didn't need any more to wait for a new printed edition, often postponed if not cancelled because of commercial constraints. Some universities began to create their own textbooks online, with chapters selected in an extensive database, as well as papers and comments from professors. For a seminar, a few print copies could be made upon request, with a selection of online articles sent to a printer.
Digital publishing and traditional publishing became complementary. The frontier between the two supports - electronic and paper - began to vanish. Recent print media already stem from an electronic version anyway, on a word processor, a spreadsheet or a database. More and more documents became "only" electronic, and more and more print books were digitized to be included in digital libraries and bookstores.
In the mid-1990s, though, there was no proof that electronic documents would make us paperless in the near future, and save some trees. Many people still needed a print version for easier reading, or for their archives, in the fear the electronic file would be accidentally deleted. We were still a transition period, from paper to digital.
1995: AMAZON.COM IS THE FIRST MAIN ONLINE BOOKSTORE
= [Overview]
The online bookstore Amazon.com was launched by Jeff Bezos in July 1995, in Seattle, on the West coast of the U.S., after a market study which led him to conclude that books were the best "products" to sell on the internet. When Amazon.com started, it had 10 employees and a catalog of 3 million books. Unlike traditional bookstores, Amazon doesn't have windows looking out on the street and books skillfully lined up on shelves or piled upon displays. The "virtual" windows are its webpages, with all transactions made through the internet. Books are 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 Japan (November 2000). A fifth subsidiary opened in Canada in June 2002, and a sixth subsidiary, named Joyo, opened in China in September 2004.
= Amazon in the U.S.
# First steps
The online bookstore Amazon.com was launched by Jeff Bezos in July 1995, in Seattle, on the West coast of the U.S., after a market study which led him to conclude that books were the best products to sell on the internet. When Amazon.com started, it had 10 employees and a catalog of 3 million books. Unlike traditional bookstores, Amazon.com didn't have windows looking out on the street and books skillfully lined up on shelves or piled upon displays. The "virtual" windows are its webpages, with all transactions made through the internet. Books are 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.