Who Came First? {Astounding Advances in Electronic Publishing}, Part 3 by Karen S. Wiesner

 

Who Came First? {Astounding Advances in Electronic Publishing}, Part 3

by Karen S. Wiesner 

E-books and e-publishing have really advanced in the last three decades. When I first entered this arena in 1998, e-books were the ugly stepsister of "real books". Fast-forward thirty years, and it's a whole different world now than those early pioneering days in the industry. In the past two weeks, I posted the first sections of an article I wrote in 2003, when e-books and e-publishing still hadn't made much of an impact. Back then, universal acceptance of them always seemed out of reach. Reflecting on changes keeps history relevant. To that end, this week, I'm posting Part 2.

 

WHO CAME FIRST?

by Karen S. Wiesner

© 2003 as featured in ELECTRONIC PUBLISHING The Definitive Guide, 2003 Edition by Karen S. Wiesner, published by Hard Shell Word Factory OOP

 

Electronic Publishing Timeline

 

The following timeline will begin with the first known e-publisher and take us through three decades of electronic publishing history. While the public at large dates e-publishing as beginning in the late 1990s, the reality is much different and much, much more fascinating:

*mass market publisher

 

1971

Project Gutenberg began.

 

"1970s"

Bob Gunner starts his first publishing company, originally called Mind-Eye ePublishing, but became aware that another e-publisher using the name (Mind’s Eye Fiction, started by Ken Jenks).

 

1986

Serendipity Systems Started in 1986.

 

1987

Eastgate Systems, Inc. Founded in 1982; first hypertext fiction published in 1987.

SoftServ Began in December 1987. SoftServ is now defunct, but publisher, J. Neil Schulman began Pulpless.com in 1996.

 

1993

BiblioBytes Founded in January 1993.

 

1994

C&M Online Media/Boson Books Online since January 1994.

The Fiction Works Established in 1994.

Great American Publishing Society {GR.AM.P.S.} Founded in 1975; first fully-electronic book-on-CD came in 1994.

 

1995

Crowsnest Books Founded in 1995.

Peak Interactive Books, Incorporated Founded in 1995.

DiskUs Publishing Started as a desktop publishing company that sold works on disks; web presence started in early 1997 and they sold their first e-book in early 1998.

 

1996

Clocktower Books Offered e-books as a free promotional venture in May 1996; offered e-books for sale December 1999.

Alexandria Digital Literature Founded in July 1996.

New Concepts Publishing Founded in August 1996 and went online in October 1996.

Hard Shell Word Factory Started in November 1996; Mary Z. Wolf bought the company at the end of 1997.

*Fodor’s Travel Publications (a division of Random House, Inc. In 1996, Fodor’s was launched onto the World Wide Web with Fodors.com, a proprietary website offering up-to-date travel information in a unique interactive format.

Antelope Publishing Started in 1996.

Virtual Publications Launched in 1996.

 

1997

Nitelinks, Inc. Incorporated in June 1997.

Electron Press Founded in mid-November 1997 and went live in the fall of that year with its first books.

Denlinger’s Publishers Ltd. A traditional publishing company since 1926, their "Emerging Technologies Department" opened in 1997.

Disc-Us Books, Inc. Founded in 1997 and opened for business in November 1998.

*Thomas Nelson Inc. Began Electronic Publishing Division in CD-ROM format in 1997.

 

1998

Private Ice Publications Founded in February 1998.

Twilight Times Books Established May 1, 1998.

MountainView Publishing Company Founded in July 1998. Merged with Treble Heart Books in 2001.

LionHearted Publishing, Inc. Founded in 1994; website went up in 1996; started publishing titles digitally in mid-1998. By mid-2000 published all titles in both formats (paper and digital).

E-dition Started its operation in August 1998.

Awe-Struck E-Books, Inc. Began in November 1998.

GLB Publishers Founded in 1990; began e-publishing in 1998.

DLSIJ Press Established in 1998.

ebooksonthe.net Founded in 1998.

Adams-Blake Publishing Been publishing books since 1990 and been in the software business since 1998.

Sirius Publications^TM Founded in 1998.

Spilled Candy Books In business since June 1995; started published e-books in 1998.

Editio-Books Founded in 1998; Qvadis Corporation acquired Editio-Books in January 2000.

 

1999

Avid Press, LLC Opened for submissions in May 1999 from website; released first titles in October 1999.

Booklocker.com Founded in the spring of 1999; Angela Adair-Hoy purchased the company from the original owner in September 1999.

*Simon and Schuster Released Stephen King’s novel BAG OF BONES in both print and electronic formats in April 1999.

*Pocket Books, a division of Simon and Schuster, Inc. Announced July 19, 1999 it would release an e-book and print-on-demand edition of one of their titles prior to hardcover publication.

LTDBooks Opened for submissions in August 1999; for sales December 1999.

Renaissance E Books Went online in September 1999.

*Simon and Schuster September 15, 1999 marked the launch of a new publishing imprint called ibooks, which published simultaneously in print and online.

*Oxford University Press Announced in December 1999 that it would offer a selection of their books digitally over the internet through netLibrary (TM). netLibrary used its proprietary technologies to create and manage e-book versions of Oxford University Press academic and reference titles.

Jacobyte Books Been in the electronic publishing business since late 1999.

Book-On-Disc.Com Founded in 1999.

Athina Publishing Founded in 1999.

HyperTech Media, Inc. Founded and incorporated in 1995 as an educational software development; became an e-book publisher in 1999.

Lone Wolf Publications Founded in 1999.

SMC Publishing Began in 1999.

Wellness Institute, Inc./Selfhelpbooks.com The Wellness Institute, Inc. was founded in 1976; Selfhelpbooks.com started in 1999.

 

2000

E-Pub2000 Founded January 1, 2000.

London Circle Publishing Founded January 2000.

Intellectua.com, LLC Formed in January 2000.

Mushroom eBooks Founded in January 2000.

ElectricStory.com Fully incorporated in February 2000.

Atlantic Bridge Publishing Founded in February 2000.

*Harlequin Enterprises Limited On February 14, 2000, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, the world’s leading publisher of romance fiction, and Women.com Networks, the premier website for women, announced the launch of eHarlequin.com which features the "Interactive Novel," which encourages visitors to read one chapter of a romance novel and vote on which way the story should go. The author then writes the next chapter according to popular vote.

*Scribner and Philtrum Press (Stephen King’s press) and electronically published through Simon & Schuster Online Stephen King’s Riding the Bullet appeared exclusively as an e-book on March 14^th, 2000.

XC Publishing Started in May 2000.

Fictionwise, Inc. Founded in June 2000.

Southern Charm Press Founded in June 2000.

*Modern Library eBooks (a division of Random House) In July 2000, Random House proudly announced the establishment of Modern Library eBooks.

Electric eBook Publishing Started in July 2000.

*Penguin Putnam Inc. On August 8, 2000, Simon & Schuster announced the Pocket Books division launch of a brand new Star Trek series to be published exclusively in electronic format. On August 23, 2000, Simon & Schuster announced its first full season of original e-books, to be published beginning Fall 2000. The list, featuring titles from every Simon & Schuster book publishing division, would be complemented by an ever-growing selection of simultaneous electronic publications for regularly scheduled paper-and-ink titles, as well as continuous electronic updating of previously published books.

On August 22, 2000, Penguin Putnam Inc. and Lightning Source Inc. SM announced the creation of a strategic alliance. Under terms of the agreement, Lightning Source would help Penguin digitize its vast content offerings, helping ensure the secure delivery of its current and future e-book titles, and providing consumers with greater access to its frontlist and backlist titles.

Leaping Dog Press Opened its doors in the Fall of 2000.

*Holtzbrinck Publishers On August 3, 2000, Lightning Source Inc. announced an alliance with Holtzbrinck Publishers, the U.S. publishing group which includes St. Martin’s Press; Picador; Tor; Forge; Henry Holt; and Farrar, Straus & Giroux to become Holtzbrinck’s primary provider of a comprehensive suite of digital fulfillment services, including "on demand" printing and secure e-book delivery. In addition, Holtzbrinck’s worldwide publishers such as Pan Macmillan and Palgrave participated in this alliance.

*McGraw-Hill Primis Custom Publishing, a unit of McGraw-Hill Education On September 13, 2000, McGraw-Hill Primis Custom Publishing announced a new Primis Online tool that enables professors to design their own e-books from the largest digitized textbook database in the world.

*Penguin Putnam Inc. On November 15, 2000, Texterity, Inc., a leading provider of e-book and e-publishing services, and Penguin Putnam Inc., a leading U.S. trade book publisher, announced the signing of an e-book conversion agreement. Under the agreement, Penguin Putnam would convert existing author’s works from PDF format into e-book and XML formats using Texterity’s fully automated TextCafe service.

*Thomas Nelson, Inc. Launched a comprehensive e-book publishing program on November 15, 2000.

eKIDna eBooks {from The eKIDna Library} Began in late 2000.

Fairgo E-Books Formed in 2000 as a part of Half of Eight Pty. Ltd., a company founded in 1995.

Writer’s Exchange E-Publishing Founded in 2000.

Zander eBooks Founded in 2000.

Next week, I'll post the article's conclusion and wrap up my retrospective on how far this industry has come in only three decades. 

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.

Visit her website here: https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

and https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog 

Find out more about her books and see her art here: http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor 

Visit her publisher here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/

Who Came First? {Astounding Advances in Electronic Publishing}, Part 2 by Karen S. Wiesner

 

Who Came First? {Astounding Advances in Electronic Publishing}, Part 2

by Karen S. Wiesner 

E-books and e-publishing have really advanced in the last three decades. When I first entered this arena in 1998, e-books were the ugly stepsister of "real books". Fast-forward thirty years, and it's a whole different world now than those early pioneering days in the industry. Last week, I posted the first part of an article I wrote in 2003, when e-books and e-publishing still hadn't made much of an impact. Back then, universal acceptance of them always seemed out of reach. Reflecting on changes keeps history relevant. To that end, this week, I'm posting Part 2.

 

WHO CAME FIRST?

by Karen S. Wiesner

© 2003 as featured in ELECTRONIC PUBLISHING The Definitive Guide, 2003 Edition by Karen S. Wiesner, published by Hard Shell Word Factory OOP

 

In the Beginning…

 

The question "Who were the first electronic publishers?" can never be answered with any real degree of accuracy, although I’ve attempted to shed as much light as possible on this mystery with this essay. The foremost reason it would be impossible to pinpoint such a thing is because, while several e-publishers have been around for a long time and continue to do business to this day (though perhaps not publishing e-books any longer), there could conceivably be hundreds of e-publishers who originated with the advent of the computer in the 1940s that have either gone out of business or the owners died themselves. (Michael Hart of Project Gutenberg says: "I only ever heard of one Etext from the 40s…some religious thing.") Because we can’t include these defunct or deceased e-publishers, we can’t pinpoint true accuracies.

Also, how can you ever pinpoint a "first" when all aspects of the publishing industry are based on growth—building on what was already there?

Multiplying the confusion, you might ask what the definition of an ’electronic publisher’ is. It could mean a company that publishes original e-books (like Hard Shell or New Concepts). Or it could mean a content provider—basically, someone who secures the rights to works out of print and converts them to e-books (like Project Gutenberg or Alexandria Digital Literature). An e-publisher could also be one who puts out e-zines, newsletters, or publishes articles, etc. online and so on. For purposes of this essay, I focus only on e-book publishers that publish original electronic novels or novellas, as well as those that publish out of print titles/re-prints of novels and/or novellas.

In addition to these things, complexities arise when you take into account that, of late, e-publishing is becoming more like traditional publishing and traditional publishing is becoming more like electronic publishing. As the heroine in the futuristic thriller The Terminator said, "A person could go crazy thinking about this."

Nevertheless, it is a fact that electronic publishing was happening in the 1970s, in what some of us will find fascinatingly "primitive" ways.

Project Gutenberg began in 1971 when Michael Hart was given an operator’s account with $100,000,000 of computer time in it by the operators of the Xerox Sigma V mainframe at the Materials Research Lab at the University of Illinois. "In the overall point-of-view, you could say I invented e-publishing," Michael states. He decided that the greatest value created by computers would not be computing, but would be the storage, retrieval, and searching of what was stored in our libraries. Ironically, Michael points out, "Instead of embracing the possibilities, governments around the world have extended and re-extended copyrights to keep the vast majority of information off the internet." The philosophy Project Gutenberg was based on was: anything that can be entered into a computer can be reproduced indefinitely...what Michael termed "Replicator Technology"—once a book or any other item (including pictures, sounds, and even 3-D items can be stored in a computer), then any number of copies can and will be available. Everyone in the world, or even not in this world (given satellite transmission) can have a copy of a book that has been entered into a computer. In fact, Project Gutenberg is available on several satellites, as well as various versions of the metal disks being sent into space. Shannon Lucid also took one of Project Gutenberg’s CDs on her record stay aboard Mir. Says Michael of the beginning of Project Gutenberg: "Once I realized what could be done with the internet, that it could be the start of the "Neo-Industrial Revolution," that it was, in essence, a very primitive combination of the Star Trek communicators, transporters and replicators, I just had to keep on providing an example of "Unlimited Distribution."

"When I entered this, there were only about 100 people on the entire internet. The dot-coms didn’t really come along until 20-25 years later... The first other Etext collection I heard of was the Oxford Text Archive, but they only believed in "Limited Distribution" of the most elitist manner, as you might well imagine. Our first Etexts we made so long ago that THEY WERE ALL IN CAPS, since computers didn’t do lowercase yet, and with a limited supply of punctuation marks."

In the ’70s, Bob Gunner (Cyber-Pulp Houston/USA ePublishing) published "fan-zines" for comic book collectors as a hobby. He was also the SYSOP for the local BBS called "The Comic Crypt" and used a Commodore 64 OS and a bunch of daisy-linked disk drives. Additionally, he’d been writing his own horror/fantasy stories and wanted a way to distribute his work to readers. To that end, Bob began creating ASCII Text files and distributing them originally from his BBS, and then, when America Online and Prodigy were introduced, through their member downloads library. When Mosaic-based (or graphic) web browsing became popular, he moved his operations to a local internet provider service and built a homepage for the company.

Serendipity Systems was started in 1986 by John Galuszka to promote the, then esoteric, idea of electronic books. John says, "Keep in mind that computers typically had 64K of memory, ran at 4.77MHz, and had floppy drives of 160K capacity; most monitors displayed 80 characters by 24 lines of text, graphics were rare, and color was very expensive. Hardware limitations were a critical factor. For example, when I couldn’t find interactive hypertext fiction, I designed one, only to discover that the hardware (1985) could not support such a large and complicated program."

Galuszka created and sold an electronic book display program called PC-BOOK in 1990. It created a stand-alone book program—press the PG DN key and the next screen of text appeared. This program, written in Turbo Pascal, featured numbered pages and also a bookmark so that the reader could keep track of where he was in the book. Other early e-publishers distributed their work in the form of word processor files, or generic ASCII (a la Project Gutenberg) files which required a word processor to display. Serendipity Systems decided to concentrate on publishing and let others do the programming.

By the early 1990s, like-minded enthusiasts gathered at Genie’s Digital Roundtable, and/or were members of the Digital Publishing Association (DPA) founded by Dr. Ron Albright. Galuszka was a member of the Board of Directors of the DPA. In 1992, the world of electronic publishing numbered a few hundred planet-wide pioneers. By the time GEnie folded, the internet was becoming popular, and "Windows" was replacing "DOS." Enthusiasts abandoned GEnie for "The Net." The DOS-based e-books in Serendipity System’s growing collection were converted to Windows-compatible editions, then morphed into HTML documents for the internet.

When asked about other early pioneers in the e-publishing field, John points out the following: "Ted Husted’s DOS program IRIS may have been the first commercially available electronic book publishing program (1989; shareware; $8.00). Our program PC-BOOK was available in 1990, but at that time Husted and I did not know of each other. Husted also published several books using his program. Husted later created the DART program (shareware; $24.00) which had expanded multi-media features. Both programs also worked with 'text reader' programs, so that vision-impaired readers could access the books.

"Shortly thereafter, others began doing the same thing: programming electronic book engines and publishing books. There may have been as many as a dozen different e-book engines available by the early 1990s.

"Jeff Napier published a variety of non-fiction works with his programs.

"Charles Wiedermann offered a number of titles and programs.

"Rod Wilmot created a hypertext poem, "Everglade," and authored the hypertext ORPHEUS program."

When Eastgate Systems was founded in 1982, it was publishing/producing mostly computer games and small software goodies like Fontina (which organizes long font lists spatially). In 1987, Eastgate published its first hypertext fiction: Afternoon, a story by Michael Joyce. The story was originally published on floppy disk and packaged in a printed vinyl casing. Eastgate editor Diane Greco says of that sentimentally archaic offering, "Very incunabular—I bet that original packaging is worth some money now!"

J. Neil Schulman began distributing books via computer media in December 1987 via SoftServ. The short answer as to why he turned to e-publishing: "…because traditional publishing always placed the interests of the author dead last. Everyone else in the bookselling pipeline—editors, artists, marketing people, sales representatives, typesetters, printers, shipping clerks and bookstore clerks—made enough off an author’s book to be able to support their families and make regular payments on their cars and mortgages. Except for a small number of anointed 'bestselling' authors, all the others were being marginalized and suffering financial catastrophes… As an author, I decided this was a bad thing and started looking into ways of getting past the existing publishing industry." Schulman’s latest venture is Pulpless.com, began in 1996.

BiblioBytes was founded in January 1993 by Glenn Hauman (dubbed a "young Turk of publishing" in the New York Observer and "a Silicon Alley veteran" by Crain’s, was a founding board member of WWWAC and a consultant for Simon & Schuster Interactive and Ballantine as well as a co-founder of Hell Kitchen’s Systems), Todd Masco and Andrew Bressen with the purpose of selling electronic publications over the internet. As they began to prepare books, they came to the realization that nobody was preparing a way to conduct commerce over the ’Net in time to meet their scheduled launch date, so they also began to pursue the creation of a financial exchange system for the internet. They conducted their first giveaway in August 1993 in collaboration with Ace Books and conducted their first sales in July of 1994. Their web page went up in October of 1994. Their business model is based on the philosophy of allowing readers to read a book free with ads, or without ads for a price. BiblioBytes obtains rights to place books on the Web, and sponsors buy ad space inside the online book. BiblioBytes prepares the book for publication on the Web and the advertisers are charged for each banner displayed on the pages for that book. BiblioBytes shares this advertising revenue with the author. Their first offerings came as 800K floppy disks. Glenn remembers some of the early publishers in electronic books were: "Laura Fillmore of the Online Book Store (now Open Book Systems (OBS), began published in 1992); Brad Templeton at Clarinet (now ClariNet Communications, began publishing in 1989); Voyager, J. Neil Schulman at SoftServ (distributed books via computer media starting December 1987) and Pulpless.com (began in 1996) and, the grandpappy of all of us, Michael Hart at Project Gutenberg (began in 1971)."

Nancy McAllister, of C&M Online Media, Inc., has had a long history in print publishing and also in multimedia, e.g. film, filmstrips, slides, microfilm—sound and images and text working together. She began online publishing on the internet in 1990 as the managing editor of a peer-reviewed journal in the humanities. In January 1994, she began to acquire books to publish on the WWW. Nancy says, "I wanted to see how print publishing would move to the internet. What skills were valuable and what new skills would have to be learned." Other than for academic publishing, informational exchange, self-publishers and vanity publishers, Nancy knew of no other e-publishers at that time. "Publishing online is, even minimally as a self-publisher or vanity publisher, labor intensive. It is also somewhat expensive. And in those days, ISPs were very unreliable and domain names were not common. After the third ISP crash, a publisher might give up. Also, books were sold without benefit of credit card capabilities. Shareware or modified shareware was the only way to sell, and most people didn’t pay for what they 'bought'. It was nearly impossible, too, to protect intellectual property in any satisfactory way. Encryption was either nonexistent or too soft. At that time, the government didn’t allow the use of tough encryption codes."

Ray Hoy had been a professional editor and writer for 40 years, so starting his own publishing company seemed like a natural thing to do. He established The Fiction Works in 1994 with the idea of producing strictly audiobooks (full theatrical productions, no less). As to why he turned to e-publishing, Ray says "Author Patricia White was responsible for getting me into the electronic publishing business, so I’m going to blame her. The third or fourth audiobook that we released was Patricia’s fantasy yarn, THE SEVENTY-NINTH PRINCE. Pat called me after she received her author copies and asked me if I’d given any thought to producing e-books. Frankly I hadn’t, as I was busy with the audiobooks. I thought about it later that night and realized how easy it would be to get into e-publishing, since I already had a pretty good selection of scripts. So, I jumped into the e-book business with both feet, and it has been a wild ride ever since." It didn’t take Ray long to figure out that publishing e-books was anything but easy. They followed the evolutionary trail along with every other e-publisher, by presenting their books in text format, then RTF, then HTML, then Adobe Acrobat, then on and on. "Until one file format proves superior, producing e-books will continue to be your basic publishing nightmare," Ray says. "It’s expensive enough to pay for readers, editors and artists, but then the real costs come into play when it comes time to convert the scripts to the various file formats needed." Currently, The Fiction Works publishes their books in text, HTML, Adobe Acrobat, PalmOS, and XML file formats.

The Great American Publishing Society (GR.AM.P.S.) was founded in 1975. According to Stephen Ellerin, publisher, "Although we began using desktop computers to create paper-based (conventionally-bound) books in 1981, our first fully-electronic book-on-CD came in 1994."

Marilyn Nesbitt, CEO of DiskUs Publishing, says, "I had a desktop publishing business called DiskUs Publishing that I opened in 1995 and we sold booklets, CDs and works on disks. I didn’t call these e-books but that’s what they were. (I just didn’t realize at the time that there were actual things called e-books) when I got my business license for DiskUs which was back in 1995. We put an author’s book on a computer disk for them and also made them a bound book of their work (spiral and then later VeloBind). We sold these in our shop for them. Then we expanded and started a web presence in early 1997 where we had e-books that could be downloaded for free while we were reading submissions and we sold our first e-book in early 1998."

Other small press electronic publishing companies became to emerge more rapidly toward the latter half of the 1990s. In 1999, mass market publishers began to take notice of this growing trend and dipped their own toes in the constantly churning waters known as electronic publishing with strategies that wouldn’t really allow them to fail as they experimented, as we’ve seen and will continue to see throughout the timeline, provided next.

 

Next week, I'll post the timeline. 

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.

Visit her website here: https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

and https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog 

Find out more about her books and see her art here: http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor 

Visit her publisher here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/

Who Came First? {Astounding Advances in Electronic Publishing}, Part 1 by Karen S. Wiesner

 

Who Came First? {Astounding Advances in Electronic Publishing}, Part 1

by Karen S. Wiesner

 

 

Oh, we have come a long way, baby, when it comes to the leaps and bounds e-books and e-publishing have advanced in the last three decades. When I first entered this arena in 1998, e-books were the ugly stepsister of "real books". Traditionally published authors, mainstream publishers, and nearly every reader encountered didn't have a clue what electronic books were, let alone what to do with them. When physical copies of the books were introduced, floppy disks and then CDs complete with cover art, astounded and nearly always repelled those who frequented bookstores and book signings. The electronic reading devices were as alien as Star Trek technology, and very expensive, to the point where few could imagine such an investment just to read books. Even the compelling arguments that countless trees could be saved, eye strain could be drastically reduced, and an e-reader "suitcase" could hold thousands of books had little or no effect on the audiences e-published authors attempted to persuade to our cause. 

Fast-forward thirty years. Printing paperbacks has now become an "on demand" practice and scarcer. Almost every reader I know enjoys and even prefers their books read on a phone or electronic device in a wide range of inexpensive models. Every publisher now offers a variety of electronic formats and huge strides have been made in making book files secure. Almost all newspapers and magazines have an electronic component--in fact, it's the only format most now offer. You can also check out e-books from libraries. Wow is it a whole different world now than those early pioneering days in the industry. 

In late March 2025, while I was completing the "legacy" compilation of a comprehensive list of details about the 156 books I've had published in the timespan since my first book was released electronically, I came across an article I wrote in 2003 that became a chapter in my annually updated ELECTRONIC PUBLISHING The Definitive Guide, which, in its heyday was truly the most complete reference for non-subsidy e-publishing available in the industry. Compelled to relive such a pivotal part of my publishing history, I read it, and found myself even more astounded by all that'd come to pass. Mind you, in 2003, e-books and e-publishing still hadn't made much of an impact on the whole. Most of us clung to hope that someday the possibilities would just explode while a small voice inside whispered that we and our products would never see universal acceptance. For that reason, this article seemed even more amazing to me, almost like a prophecy about the future that always seemed out of reach at that time. 

I believe looking back and reflecting on changes is an important part of keeping history relevant, so, for the next four weeks, I'm going to post this 2003 article I wrote. I took out the many, many links that were in it, since all/most of them were broken anyway. In fact, most of the publishers mentioned are defunct--so I took out most of the references to publishers who closed their doors already then and now. I also updated the spelling and grammar of some words that were written differently back then. Other than that, I'm posting the article in its entirety and intact, without revising any part of it. I think you'll marvel just like I did when I dragged this article of the ruins and saw that the world as we know it when it comes to e-books and e-publishing has been turned upside down in only three decades. 

And, now, without further ado, here's Part 1 of that article.

 

WHO CAME FIRST?

by Karen S. Wiesner

© 2003 as featured in ELECTRONIC PUBLISHING The Definitive Guide, 2003 Edition by Karen S. Wiesner, published by Hard Shell Word Factory OOP

 

Since electronic publishing became the ultra-popular buzz word of the industry, there’s been a lot of talk going around about who first came up with the idea of e-publishing and who the first e-publisher was. We hear things like "It was 199-; there was no such thing as e-books" and "We only see futuristic things like e-books in episodes of Star Trek."

Mass market publishers have been claiming they broke new ground with publishing since Simon Schuster released Stephen King’s novel Bag of Bones in both print and electronic formats (April 1999) and Pocket Books announced on July 19, 1999 that it would release an e-book and print-on-demand edition of one of their titles prior to hardcover publication (KNOCKDOWN: The Harrowing True Account of a Yacht Race Turned Deadly by Martin Dugard). This "leap into the electronic future" was touted as a "first time venture."

On March 14, 2000, Simon & Schuster went one further and published Stephen King’s novella Riding the Bullet in electronic-only format. It was said of the venture: "This innovative publication strategy takes the e-book from the realm of novelty and directly into the very mainstream of today’s culture…" But was this a leap? Was it actually innovative or fantasy-made-reality? Ironically, it was also Simon & Schuster that asked authors for 15,000-40,000 word works for e-books and offered advances of $1000 (2.5 cents a word on the low end; 65 cents per word on the high end) in exchange. An S&S spokesperson said of the deal, "We’re a traditional publisher. We don’t have dot-com dollars to throw around."

Random House established Modern Library e-Books, which published 100 works of classic literature from the Modern Library backlist in electronic form, beginning July 2000. In September 2000, Random House claimed it "has just become the first major trade publisher to announce publication of a complete editorial list of original electronic books, commissioned expressly for this publishing format." The first 20 e-books, both fiction and nonfiction, appeared in January 200l under the new imprint, AtRandom, and were offered as trade paperbacks as well as in digital format. Yet at least one mass market publisher beat them to the punch as the first trade publisher to offer their editorial list as original e-books. In 1997, Denlinger’s Publishers Ltd. produced original titles in both electronic format and print-on-demand paperbacks from their Emerging Technologies Department.

On October 6, 2000, Thomas Nelson, Inc. announced they’d become "the first Christian publisher to launch a comprehensive e-book publishing program." However, MountainView Publishing Company had been publishing Christian books in electronic format since July 1998.

The media has accredited Stephen King with the (supposedly) never-before-attempted venture of offering a book via installment chapters (a.k.a. serial), though King himself claimed he was trying "out a concept so old it may seem new." The Plant was experimentally self-published in e-format in July 2000 by Stephen King, chapter by chapter (and remains at the time of this writing unfinished), with readers paying a dollar for those chapters, on an honor basis. The Plant brought in an astounding (by e-publishing standards) net profit of $463,832.27. In the ’70s, Bob Gunner (currently the owner of Cyber-Pulp Houston/USA ePublishing) became aware that another e-publisher was using a name similar to his first e-publishing venture, Mind Eye ePublishing. That company was Mind’s Eye Fiction owned by Ken Jenks. According to Gunner, even back then, Mind’s Eye Fiction used a free-sample/buy-the-rest-if-you-like-it system: "He would let them read a page or so, and then the reader would decide if they wanted to read the rest of the story and pay for the key." Mind’s Eye Fiction remains in business to this day, having been purchased by Alexandria Digital Literature in November 1999. In the late 1980s, Bob Gunner published his e-books as "Donationware"—if the reader enjoyed it, they could send a dollar to the author. "I never received too many of those dollars," Bob says. "We felt the writing was most important; the money really did not matter at the time. We always believed the money would come later." Suddenly Stephen King’s solo venture with The Plant in 2000—profit aside—seems very clichéd, doesn’t it?

Even small press electronic publishers are vying for the "first" title—first e-publisher, first 5 star review of an e-book, first bestselling e-book, and on and on.

So who’s right? Who’s confused? Who’s taking credit that isn’t due them? Who’s quietly going about their business without ever realizing they’ve started a revolution?

Next week we'll really get into the meat of this article. 

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.

Visit her website here: https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

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