40 Years of Ebooks?!?

Did you know that the first ebook was made in 1971 by Michael Hart and was a copy of the Declaration of Independence? Next week, March 6–12 is Read an Ebook Week (who knew?) To read about the origin of this event, check out the ebookweek web site, which includes a history of electronic books. They are also running a contest to win a Nook ereader, so that would be a nice bonus. They have a page of ways to celebrate, and a list of the benefits of e-reading, such as mobility, accessibility, and savings (assuming you don’t go crazy buying e-books like a kid in a candy store. Or like my husband in the App store.)

Here is a very cool infographic made by Ebook Friendly to celebrate Read an Ebook Week:

via ebookfriend.ly

Feel free to go get the code and post the above infographic, that’s why they made it. Ebook Friendly is an intriguing site that provides a “distraction-free” way to browse Amazon books. I tried a search under children’s ebooks for cats. It indeed looks much nicer than Amazon’s chaotic pages.

I suspect that the next 40 months (or maybe 40 weeks) will have at least as many interesting milestones. One thing I’m going to do to celebrate Read an Ebook Week is to Tweet this post with the hashtag: #ebookweek. Hope you will, too, and/or post a link on your Facebook page, and your other outlets. There are little icons at the bottom of this post that make it easy to share the link.

TIA!


Loreen Leedy