Editors’ preface

This chapter provides a detailed examination of the e-book, its marketplace and its readership and how these have developed over the past decade. The author considers the e-book and its history, the role of the reader, the technologies available and the users of e-books. In addition she discusses hypertext fiction, online bookselling and locating rare and second-hand texts. This chapter encourages the practitioner to consider adopting new strategies in order to meet the demands resulting from the availability of these new technologies.

Introduction

In the late 1990s publishers thought they had discovered an exciting new way of delivering literature to readers, and a promising new revenue stream: the e-book. The hype about e-books became pervasive, insisting that we would soon be reading almost everything online, from academic journals to glossy magazines – and yet, around ten years later, paper is still the dominant medium for most types of publication, and certainly for literature, and the number of books and magazines published is greater than ever. Literature is largely delivered to readers on paper, in the form of traditional print on paper. So what happened to all the overheated predictions about the future, and has anything really changed as a result of electronic publishing? This chapter will examine not only e-books, but also the effects that electronic delivery of information of various sorts have had on the way that publishers and authors deliver literature to readers.

The e-book and its history

The definition of an e-book is inseparable from the history of hype, bust and cautious retrenchment that has characterized the e-book. To use a broad definition, it is simply a digital version of a text, which might otherwise be printed. Indeed, almost all printed books are now composed and typeset electronically, and so in theory it is as simple to output such material as an electronic file as it is to print it. This was one of the reasons for the enthusiasm that publishers initially felt about e-books: it is possible to sell the same thing twice, in different media. Not only that, but electronic copies would need no warehousing and have smaller distribution costs.