The web became a marketing tool for publishers. Some publishers decided to put the full text of some books on the web, for free, with their authors' consent. Oddly enough, there was no drop in sales - on the contrary, sales increased. In the US, NAP was the first publisher to take such a risk in 1994, followed by the MIT Press in 1995, and it worked.
NAP (National Academy Press) was created by the National Academy of Sciences to publish its own reports and the ones of the National Academy of Engineering, the Institute of Medicine, and the National Research Council. In 1994, NAP was publishing 200 books a year in science, engineering, and health. The new NAP Reading Room offered 1,000 entire books, available online for free in various formats ("image" format, HTML format and PDF format).
In 1995, the MIT Press (MIT: Massachusetts Institute of Technology) was publishing 200 new books a year and 40 journals, first in science and technology, and then in architecture, social theory, economics, cognitive science, and computational science. The MIT Press 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 the print books increased.
Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, wrote in 1997: "As university publishers struggle to find the right business model for offering scholarly documents online, some early innovators are finding that making a monograph available electronically can boost sales of hard copies. The National Academy Press has already put 1,700 of its books online, and is finding that the electronic versions of some books have boosted sales of the hard copy monographs - often by two to three times the previous level. It's 'great advertising', says the Press's director. The MIT Press is experiencing similar results: 'For each of our electronic books, we've approximately doubled our sales. The plain fact is that no one is going to sit there and read a whole book online. And it costs money and time to download it'." (excerpt from the Project Gutenberg Newsletter of October 1997)
1995: AMAZON.COM
[Overview]
Amazon.com was a "pioneer" online bookstore that created an entirely new economic model. 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 window is its website, 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.com had 7,500 employees, a catalog of 28 million items, 23 million clients worldwide and four subsidiaries in UK (in August 1998), in Germany (in August 1998), in France (August 2000) and in Japan (October 2000). A fifth subsidiary opened in Canada in June 2002. A sixth subsidiary - named Joyo - opened in China in September 2004.
[In Depth (published in 1999)]
Jeff Bezos launched Amazon.com in July 1995, after a market study which led him to conclude that books were the best products to sell on the internet.
In Spring 1994, he 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.