An estimated 100m or more books have been
produced since Johann Gutenberg invented movable type in the 15th
century. A large part of this vast literature is now being converted to
digital books and moved into the world of electronic publishing.
A significant effort is being made by a
number of universities and companies such as Google and (until recently)
Microsoft to digitally capture the content of huge numbers of books.
This mass digitization of the world's literature is made possible by
agreements made with major libraries around the world. Google reached a
total of 1 million books scanned and digitized in early 2007. Digital
publishing has to some degree replaced this effort where newly published
books are concerned, but the vast body of literature was printed before
2010 when major publishers began to generate eBooks directly.
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