1970s

Project Gutenberg was started in 1971 by Michael Hart at the University of Illinois with the aim of establishing an electronic public library of 10,000 books. The ethos of the project mirrored the not-for-profit idealism that spawned the internet itself: Hart saw e-publishing as a utopian, democratic tool for the education of the greatest number of people possible. As a result, Project Gutenberg files have always been in plain text to make them as easy as possible to download.

When there were only about 100 people using the internet, Bob Gunner, a publisher of comic book fanzines and writer of fantasy/horror books, made his stories accessible using ASCII text files through the emerging member downloads libraries at Prodity and America Online. When graphics became available, he moved to a local internet provider and built a homepage.

During the same period, Ken Jenks started Mind Eye ePublishing, which allowed visitors to read a page of a novel before buying it. The company was bought out in 1999 and can now be found at http://www.alexlit.com.

1987

Eastgate Systems, a company known for creating computer games, published its first hypertext fiction work: "Afternoon", a story by Michael Joyce. The book was available on floppy disk.

1990

John Galuskza, founder of Serendipity Systems, created an ebook display program called PC-Book. It featured numbered pages and bookmarks.

1992

DOS-based ebooks were converted to Windows-compatible editions.

1993

BiblioBytes launched a website to sell ebooks over the internet, the first company to create a financial exchange system for the net.

1994

The format in which ebooks were published changed from plain text to HTML.

Roy Hoy launched the publishing company The Fiction Works (www.fictionworks.com) specifically to produce ebooks.

1998

NuroMedia released the first handheld ebook reader, the Rocket, which allowed ebooks to be downloaded from a PC via a serial cable.

SoftBook launched its SoftBook reader. With a leather cover, this telephone-based catalogue ordering system could carry 100,000 pages of content, including text, graphics and pictures.

1999

American publisher Simon & Schuster created a new imprint, ibooks, and became the first trade publisher simultaneously to publish titles in ebook and print format. Featured authors included Arthur C Clarke, Irving Wallace, Howard Fast and Raymond Chandler.

Oxford University Press offered a selection of its books over the internet through netLibrary.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology in America held its first ebook conference. Dick Brass of Microsoft declared that ebooks were the future of reading. "We are embarking on a revolution that will change the world at least as much as Gutenberg did," he declared, and predicted that by 2018, 90% of all books sold would be ebooks.

2000

January

The free software Glassbook ebook reader for PC is launched.

March

Stephen King's novel Bag of Bones is published exclusively on the net, for use with the Glassbook ebook reader. Users could download the book for $2.50 to read on a computer or personal organiser. The ebook sold 500,000 copies in 48 hours. One e-publisher commented, "He's done for e-publishing in one week what it might have taken us years to accomplish."

August

Microsoft launched its first ebook reader software. Called Microsoft Reader, it can be used on a PC, ebook reader or PDA.

Microsoft and Amazon joined forces to sell ebooks. The online bookstore used the new Microsoft software to enable customers to download their ebooks on to PCs and handhelds.

October

The Frankfurt Book Fair hosted its inaugural ebook awards, described as "the first designed to recognise achievements in the emerging ebook industry". Veteran crime writer Ed McBain won best fiction work originally published in ebook form for his Detective Carella mystery, The Last Dance; Zadie Smith picked up best fiction work originally published in print and converted to ebook for her bestseller White Teeth.

November

Gemstar launched its new handheld ebook readers, RCA and RED 1100. These were smaller in size than previous formats, with easier navigation and the capacity to hold up to 10 ebooks as well as magazine and newspaper articles. The user can also add bookmarks, underline passages and make notes.

2001

Jan

Adobe launched its latest ebook reader software, an updated version of the Glassbook reader, allowing users to underline, take notes and bookmark.

Random House (US) launched an ebook imprint.

Feb

HarperCollins launched its international ebook imprint, PerfectBound.

March

Time Warner Books launched its ebook imprint, ipublish.

August

Penguin launched its ebook section, ePenguin, with an autumn list of 200 books.

October

Random House (UK) launched its ebook division.

WHSmith launched an ebook section, the first mainstream British bookshop to do so.

December

Time Warner closed ipublish, saying: "The market for ebooks has simply not developed the way we hoped."