[gweekly] PT2 The Future of eBooks

[Michael Hart]

ebkfutr2.art


PT2  The Future of eBooks


How Many eBooks?


Predicting the future of eBooks has always been a
combination of fun and funny:  fun in the sense I
enjoy predicting something no one ever believes--
funny in the sense that even after so many years,
nearly 14 now, of growth rates exceeding "Moore's
Law," yet, still every single year including this
one, so many people still say we can't do it, one
more year or the year after.

How many free eBooks are available?

This week there are so many new eBooks officially
posted for free download that it is hard to count
them all, simply because we don't know which ones
are duplicates of other ones.  This will take the
professional cataloguers some time to figure out.

Meanwhile we will try to be well on the way to an
eBook collection of 100,000 unique files for them
to catalogue.

So far we would guesstimate that the total number
of volunteers at Project Gutenberg has been about
30,000, from those who have dropped into our site
to proofread a few Distributed Proofreader pages,
you can take a quick look at:  http://pgdp.net  ,
to those who have worked on thousands of eBooks.

It will obviously take many more volunteers, your
own efforts hopefully included, to create a final
eLibrary containing all the public domain books a
library of this nature might contain, and I use a
term such as "final" somewhat lightly, as it will
always be the case the new ones are coming in.

However, just for the sake of those who want some
"real" predictions, I would guesstimate that some
10,000,000 public domain works will be available,
counting books, newspapers, magazines, music, and
all the other items found in libraries today.

Of course, this number of 10 million is exceeded,
already, at a few dozen of the largest libraries,
and I leave it again to the cataloguers to figure
out just how things should be counted.


The Current Counting Methodology

Here is a brief rundown of Moore's Law projecting
the growth pattern of eBooks, as compared with an
actual growth pattern at Project Gutenberg.


  Projected Growth Rate             Actual Growth Rate

eBooks  Date  Year   Years       eBooks  Date  Year   Years

    10 Dec 10, 1990     0            10 Dec 10, 1990     0
    40 Dec 10, 1993     3           100 Dec 10, 1993     3
   160 Dec 10, 1996     6          1000 Aug 15, 1997     6.6
   640 Dec 10, 1999     9          2000 Dec 10, 1999     8
  2560 Dec 10, 2002    12          6400 Nov 27, 2002    11.9
10240 Dec 10, 2005    15         10000 Oct 15, 2003    12.8
20480 Dec 10, 2008    18        ?25000 Nov 04, 2004    14?


Just think of what we can do, if you can help us
continue this growth rate past 2014!!!


   eBooks  Date  Year   Years       eBooks  Date  Year   Years

   20480 Dec 10, 2008    18        ?25000 Nov 04, 2004    14?
   81920 Dec 10, 2011    21       ?100000 Nov 04, 2007    17?
  327680 Dec 10, 2014    24       ?400000 Nov 04, 2010    20?
1310720 Dec 10, 2017    27      ?1000000 Nov 04, 2014    23?


Still think this is impossible?


One year ago there were 10,000 eBooks available,
that's 1,000 for every 10 eBooks back in 1990--
that's 100 for every 100 eBooks back in 1993!

Today there are 25,000 Project Gutenberg eBooks,
all we need is to multiply that by 400. . . .

And we have years and years to do it. . . .