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Online retail giant, Amazon, was founded in 1994 by Jeff Bezos and the original Amazon website launched in 1995. Right now, Amazon is a phenomenally successful business and probably one of the most recognisable and trusted brands in the world. It’s easy to forget just what an innovative notion purchasing books on the web and having them delivered by mail was at the time. Many business analysts predicted that Amazon would struggle – and it wasn’t until the end of 2001 that they reported profits.

Having altered the method by which many people purchased books, Amazon expanded into other areas very rapidly. Audio CDs, video, consumer electronics, computer software and toys were all additions to Amazon’s portfolio. Today you can find practically any consumer item that you can think of from Amazon – including your weekly groceries.

As well as adding to their product range, Amazon launched websites in France, the UK, Germany, Canada and China. However, they retained their original passion for books and they continued to have a very powerful association with books in the view of the public.

This was something that would stand them in good stead in November of 2007 when the Amazon Kindle e-book reader launched. They had already redefined the way that books were bought, and now Amazon was doing nothing less than changing the act of reading itself. The Kindle reader got a lot of publicity and it’s fair to say that e-book readers really took off with the launch of Amazon’s upgraded Kindle 2.0 in February of 2009.

In June of the same year, Amazon followed up with the large format Kindle DX. This had a larger e-ink display and was intended for use by readers of newspapers, magazines and academic textbooks. Much of the buzz surrounding the DX was generated by the normally conservative world of academic publishing.

So, the way that books are bought, delivered and read have all been changed in a relatively short period of time. The last piece of the reading jigsaw – publishing – is also likely to change in the near future. Any major publisher will almost certainly require to publish an e-book version of any new editions in future. The well established process of hardback publication, followed a few months later by the paperback version will be altered by the insertion of an e-book version at the front end of the cycle.

The fact that publishing e-books is much cheaper than either hardback or paperback release could well encourage publishing houses to be more daring in future. It may lead to more new authors being published as the process will carry considerably less financial risk. It could also result in more authors taking greater control by self publishing. In fact, publishing Kindle books is, even now, an achievable goal for anyone who has an Amazon account and who can operate simple word processing software such as Microsoft Word. E-book readers represent a genuine revolution in reading.

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