Quote:
Originally Posted by lamoe
Checked out the “similar threads” at the end of my post and see that the oldest link to Baen is from 2003. Didn’t realize readers have been around that long.
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Roughly speaking, we are currently in the fourth wave of ebook reading.
The first wave goes back to the pre-PC era and time-sharing systems. Project Gutenberg started around then.
The second wave moved the action to PCs and Universities got into the act.
In the late 90's PDAs hosted the third wave and gave birth to the precursors of most of the current major formats. We also saw the first commercial ebooks from the likes of Baen, Peanut Press, and others.
Around the turn of the century the first dedicated reader devices came out and ebook reading started to expand beyond computers (desktop or pocket) to cellphones. Shortly thereafter, Amazon and B&N, among others, started selling ebooks but the volume was low and eventually they both closed up shop. Everything since then has been an ongoing search for a business model that could take ebooks into the mainstream of publishing and there is every indication that we are at that threshold now.
It's been a long wait (and we're barely getting started with the mainstreaming) but it looks like ebooks are here to stay.
(And it's about time!
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