The Online Books Page offered links to 12,000 ebooks in 1999,
20,000 ebooks in 2003 (including 4,000 ebooks published by
women), 25,000 ebooks in 2006, and 30,000 ebooks in 2008. The
books "have been authored, placed online, and hosted by a wide
variety of individuals and groups throughout the world", with
7,000 books from Project Gutenberg. The FAQ lists copyright
information about most countries in the world, with links to
further reading.

1994: SOME PUBLISHERS GET BOLD AND GO DIGITAL

= [Overview]

Some bold publishers decided to use the web as a marketing
tool. In the U.S., NAP (National Academy Press) was the first
publisher in 1994 to post the full text of some books, for
free, with the authors' consent. NAP was followed by MIT Press
in 1995. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, wrote in
1997: "As university publishers struggle to find the right
business model for offering scholarly documents online, some
early innovators are finding that making a monograph available
electronically can boost sales of hard copies" (excerpt from
the Project Gutenberg Newsletter of October 1997). Digital
publishing became mainstream in 1997. Digitization accelerated
the publication process. Editors, designers and other
contributors could all work at the same time on the same book.
For educational, academic and scientific publications, digital
publishing was a cheaper solution than print books, with
regular updates to include the latest information.

= Publishers get bold

Some publishers decided to use the web as a marketing tool. In
the U.S., NAP (National Academy Press) was the first publisher
in 1994 to post the full text of some books, for free, with the
authors' consent. NAP was followed by MIT Press (MIT:
Massachusetts Institute of Technology) in 1995.

NAP was created by the National Academy of Sciences to publish
its own reports and the ones of the National Academy of
Engineering, the Institute of Medicine, and the National
Research Council. In 1994, NAP was publishing 200 new books a
year in science, engineering, and health. The new NAP Reading
Room offered 1,000 entire books, available online for free in
various formats: "image" format, HTML format and PDF format.
Oddly enough, there was no drop in sales - on the contrary,
sales increased.

In 1995, MIT Press was publishing 200 new books per year and 40
journals, in science and technology, architecture, social
theory, economics, cognitive sc