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By Keila Santa '25
It’s the first week of March, which means National Read an eBook Week is here! Though printed books will always be near and dear to the book lover’s heart, there are undeniable pros to the invention of the eBook that have changed the game for readers and writers alike. For one, they are functional—no need to lug around 10 books in your travel suitcase when you can store hundreds on an e-reader. eBooks are also highly accessible for those who have trouble reading smaller fonts since font type and size can be adjusted within seconds. For those who love annotating or learning new vocabulary, the digital form offers easy highlighting, note-taking, and dictionary features as well. And you can’t talk about eBooks without talking about how widely available they are. eBooks are often cheaper than physical books, and can be borrowed right from any digital device through libraries or foundations that aim to increase overall readership (think apps like Libby). But how on earth did eBooks come to be? Well, that’s what we will be exploring today.
Humans have been telling stories long before books were created. Whether it was for entertainment or to warn the community of danger, the ancient world favored oral storytelling, along with cave drawings and stone carvings. Once early civilizations began developing language and writing materials however, they began producing the precursors to books: Ancient Egyptians famously used papyrus scrolls, and the Romans created the Codex. The Chinese were the first to produce books using a technique called woodblock printing, but like most ancient methods, it was still highly inefficient. It wasn’t until the 15th century that books were mass produced, when German goldsmith Johannes Gutenberg introduced the mechanical movable-type printing press. This invention streamlined the printing process and kick-started the Printing Revolution in Europe. After this, things picked up pretty quickly, and physical books became widely available to the public due to the newfound means of mass production (“Scrolls to Ebooks").
The idea of an e-reader as we know it today can be traced back to the 1930’s when Bob Brown wrote an entire book on this futuristic invention called The Readies, which was playing off the name of the “talkie” (Hawkins). Brown wrote:
The written word hasn’t kept up with the age… The movies have outmaneuvered it. We have the talkies, but as yet no Readies… To continue reading at today’s speed, I must have a machine… A simple reading machine which I can carry or move around, attach to any old electric light plug and read hundred-thousand-word novels in 10 minutes if I want to, and I want to. (Brown 28-29)
He even specified that this machine would allow readers to “adjust the type size and avoid paper cuts”—an accurate prediction if you ask me! However, it would take over 40 years for Brown’s vision to become reality (Hawkins).
In 1971, Michael S. Hart created the first ever eBook by typing out the Declaration of Independence in a mainframe computer that was primarily used for data processing. He also manually digitized other texts, including the Bill of Rights, the Constitution, and Lewis Carroll's Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Later, Hart launched Project Gutenberg, which was the first digital library that aimed to encourage reading and knowledge-seeking by providing free access to books (“Scrolls to E-books"). After this, things progressed in the eBook realm rather quickly. In 1985, Voyager Company was founded and published “expanded books” on CD-ROM, and in 1993, Digital Book, Inc. offered the first 50 digital books on floppy disk. The late 90’s then introduced a plethora of game-changing events: Rocket Ebook and Softbook, the first dedicated eBook readers, were launched; the first ISBN issue to an eBook was obtained; Google was founded; and free eBooks became available through US libraries through websites and associated services (Hawkins).
In 2000, Stephen King helped to make the digital form more mainstream when he released his novella, Riding the Bullet, as a digital-only computer readable file. Two years later, Random House and HarperCollins started selling digital versions of their publications as well. Sony then released the Librie e-reader in 2004, and its Sony reader in 2006, and of course, Amazon stepped in and changed the reading world forever in 2007 with its launch of the Kindle. Barnes and Noble then came out with the Nook a couple of years later, and with Apple devices such as iPhones and iPads emerging around the same time, it’s no surprise that the eBook quickly became the new hot thing. By 2011, eBook sales on Amazon surpassed paperback sales, and then hardcover sales by the end of 2012, topping over $3 billion in revenue nationwide (Hawkins).
So, there you have it. With the rise in overall readers since the pandemic, and as a recent Kindle owner myself, I wouldn’t be surprised if e-books have continued to increase in popularity since then. Yes, nothing can truly replace the feeling of holding your favorite paperback, but there is no doubting the positive impact that the invention of eBooks has had on the reading world. What will your next e-read be?
References:
Brown, Bob. The Readies. Edited by Craig Saper, Roving Eye Press, 1930, Monoskop, https://monoskop.org/images/e/e8/Brown_Bob_The_Readies.pdf, Accessed 1 Mar. 2025.
“From Scrolls to Ebooks: The Invention of Books.” The Yale Wave, Yale University, 24 Sept. 2021, campuspress.yale.edu/wave/from-scrolls-to-ebooks-the-invention-of-books/.
Hawkins, Trudy. “The History of eBooks from 1930’s ‘Readies’ to Today’s GPO eBook Services.” Government Book Talk, Government Publishing Office, govbooktalk.gpo.gov/2014/03/10/the-history-of-ebooks-from-1930s-readies-to-todays-gpo-ebook-services/. Accessed 2 Mar. 2025.
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