In late 2003, Adobe opened its own online bookstore, the Digital Media Store, with titles in PDF format from major publishers (HarperCollins, Random House, Simon & Schuster, etc.) as well as electronic versions of newspapers and magazines like The New York Times, Popular Science, etc. Adobe also launched Adobe eBooks Central as a service to read, publish, sell and lend ebooks, and Adobe eBook Library as a prototype digital library.
= Open eBook and ePub
In 1999, there were nearly as many ebook formats as ebooks, with each new company creating its own format for its own ebook reader (software) and its own electronic device, for example the Glassbook Reader, the Peanut Reader, the Rocket eBook Reader (for the Rocket eBook), the Franklin Reader (for the eBookMan), the Cytale ebook reader (for the Cybook), the Gemstar eBook Reader (for the Gemstar eBook), the Palm Reader (for the Palm Pilot), etc.
The digital publishing industry felt the need to work on a common format for ebooks. It released in September 1999 the first version of the Open eBook (OeB) format, based on XML (eXtensible Markup Language) and defined by the Open eBook Publication Structure (OeBPS). The Open eBook Forum was created in January 2000 to develop the OeB format and OeBPS specifications. Since 2000, most ebook formats were derived from - or are compatible with the OeB format, for example the PRC format from Mobipocket or the LIT format from Microsoft.
In April 2005, the Open eBook Forum became the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF). The OeB format was replaced with the ePub format, a global standard for ebooks with PDF. The PDF files created with recent versions of Adobe Acrobat are compatible with the ePub format.
= Microsoft Reader
Microsoft launched the Microsoft Reader in April 2000, for people to read books in LIT (from "literature") format on its new PDA, the Pocket PC. Four months later, in August 2000, the Microsoft Reader was available for computers, and then for any Windows platform, for example the platforms of the Tablets PC launched in November 2002.
Microsoft billed publishers and distributors for the use of its
DRM technology through the Microsoft DAS Server, with a
commission on each sale. Microsoft also partnered with major
online bookstores - Barnes & Noble.com in January 2000 and
Amazon.com in August 2000 - for them to offer ebooks for the
Microsoft Reader in eBookstores soon to be launched. Barnes &
Noble.com opened its eBookstore in August 2000, followed by
Amazon in November 2000.
= Mobipocket Reader
Mobipocket was founded in March 2000 in Paris, France, by Thierry Brethes and Nathalie Ting, as a company specializing in ebooks for PDAs. The Mobipocket format (PRC, based on the OeB format) and the Mobipocket Reader were "universal" and could be used on any PDA - and also on any computer from April 2002. They quickly became global standards for ebooks on mobile devices.