Originally published November 29 2005
Books continue the leap from page to monitor
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
Fiction writers who have never been published will have the chance to have their work displayed on the internet thanks to the eAuthor contest. Additionally, project Gutenberg could make one million e-books available by 2015.
Best seller authors like John Grisham have started putting up the first chapter of his new fiction on the internet to entice the readers to buy the print version.
Several global internet companies like Google and Amazon plan to offer online versions of various printable contents available in the libraries across the world, besides the existing print version with a price tag to see and download the online version.
Recently, Microsoft announced that it would tie up with Open Content Alliance (OCA), that includes Yahoo and University of California and Internet Archive, to develop a MSN Book Search.
One of the earliest initiatives in electronic books was that of Project Gutenberg started by a student of Illinois in July 1971.
For him, the goal was to source books whose copyright had expired and make them available free in the virtual world.
The first digitised library was developed out of the project Gutenberg and it was also the first internet information site.
According to Marie Lebert's article on "Michael Hart: Changing the world through e-books", Michael himself typed in the first hundred books.
Google's aim is to digitise the content of libraries and develop a database which would be linked to Google search.
In the US, Authors' Guild and Association of Publishers are opposing Google's Print program as the both the publishers and authors believe that their could be copyright violation once the texts are available online.
Both Microsoft and Yahoo have announced that they will separately fund OCA digitisation and scanning of works available in the public domain.
Penguin India president Thomas Abraham thinks that in the Indian market, e-publication of books will be limited to reference materials like dictionary and encyclopedia.
At present, Penguin India's online initiative is limited to promotional activity of sample chapters of forthcoming books.
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