History of Ebook 4

There are some parts of the industry where there are particularly notable leading firms. In the general field of science-fiction and fantasy, Baen Books, an American publishing company established in 1983 by science fiction publishing industry long-timer Jim Baen (1943–2006) has a well-established position. It is a science fiction and fantasy publishing house that specializes in space opera/military science fiction and fantasy (though it does not restrict itself to these subgenres). It is notable for releasing books without DRM in a variety of formats, before hard-copy publication, and pre-releasing ebooks in parts before the hard-copy release. Many older titles are available for free, especially the first book in a series.

As of 2010, there is no industry-wide e-book bestseller list, but various e-book vendors compile bestseller lists, such as those by BooksOnBoard[32], Amazon Kindle Bestsellers[33] and Fictionwise[34].
There are two yearly awards for excellence in e-books—the EPIC eBook Award[35] (formerly EPPIE) given by EPIC, and the Dream Realm Award[36] for science fiction, fantasy and horror e-books. Both awards have been given since 2000.

e-Readers
For more details on e-book readers, see List of e-book readers.

e-Readers may be specifically designed for that purpose, or intended for other purposes as well. The term is restricted to hardware devices and used to describe a category type.

Specialized devices have the advantage of doing one thing well. Specifically, they tend to have the right screen size, battery lifespan, lighting and weight. A disadvantage of such devices is that they are often expensive when compared to multi-purpose devices such as laptops and PDAs.

In 2010, competition sent the price for the most popular electronic reading devices below USD 200.[3]

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