The Business of Digital Publishing

5

The context for ebook formats and e-readers

Introduction

We have looked at the frameworks in place for developing digital products, from workflow and structured documents to the web and information architecture. Developments here have been in progress for some decades. However, there is one section of the marketplace that has taken off more recently and that is in the area of consumer books. We will look much more closely at the specifics of that market in Chapter 9 but here we will focus on the technological developments behind the growth of ebooks and e-readers.

The development of ebook formats

The technology for books to be produced in digital form goes back a few decades but, in terms of the more general consumer, the early ebooks were ...