The eBook is 40
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Summary
Editor's review
Who it's for
A good fit for
- Digital publishing and eBook industry professionals who want to understand the early origins of the eBook
- Students of library science or editing and publishing who need background on digital reading history
- General readers interested in the public domain and the free eBook movement
- Readers interested in technology history and knowledge-sharing ideals looking for light reading
Not a good fit for
- Readers expecting a systematic industry history or in-depth theoretical analysis
- Readers wanting Chinese publishing market cases and current business models
- Readers who prefer literary narrative or biography-style writing
Reading tips
- Start with the sections on 1971 and Michael Hart to establish the chronological starting point.
- Read alongside the actual Project Gutenberg site to understand how it operates.
- Supplement with library science or publishing history textbooks to avoid understanding it in isolation.
- After reading, compile a timeline of eBook development for easier recall and reuse.
About the publisher
Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.
Contents
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FAQ
Does this book cover the complete forty-year history of the eBook?
The book is in English—is it hard to read?
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About the author
Marie Lebert is a French translator and researcher of books and digital publishing. She holds a doctorate in linguistics from the Sorbonne and has worked in translation and library roles at international organizations in several countries; she now lives in Australia. Her research focuses on multilingualism online, e-books and the history of translation, and her writing for general readers traces how books have moved from print to digital form. Representative works include La Jérusalem médiévale, Del libro impreso al libro digital, Le Projet Gutenberg and Le Livre 010101: Enquête, and 47 of her titles are held in the collection. Her e-books and writings on Project Gutenberg are distributed free of charge through the University of Toronto's NEF and Project Gutenberg, making them easy to access online. Public information about her is limited, and her works centre on digital publishing and changing reading practices.
