The history of the e-book spans a longer period of time than many people realize. Most people would assume that the Internet predated the e-book. However, this is not the case. The very first e-book was the United States Declaration of Independence. It was written by Project Gutenberg founder Michael S Hart in 1971, although the Internet was not created until 1974. Even then, it was not the Internet we know today. today. In order to trace the history of e-books to the present day, the following questions must be addressed. What did early forms of e-books look like? what types of formats are used in electronic publishing; what types of devices are used to read electronically; what is digital rights management and how does it apply to e-books? and what impact the e-book has had on book prices and publishing business models. As mentioned above, the first e-book was an electronic version of the United States Declaration of Independence. This development was the first step towards the now famous Project Gutenberg started in 1971 by Michael S. Hart. Hart's goal was "to encourage the creation and distribution of electronic books" (www.gutenberg.org: Mission Statement). His initial goal was to digitize 10,000 texts, which was achieved in October 2003, but he recognized that if sufficient funding could be found he would aim for a million or more (Lebert 2009: 7). Considering the current form of the e-book, it may seem counterintuitive that the first e-book appeared before the development of the Internet. However this is the case, Project Gutenberg was started in 1971 and the internet wasn't created until 1974 and even then it wasn't very widespread or comparable to the current internet we know and let's take for... middle of paper. .....d 10/30/2011Cox, Peter. 10/31/2011. “Falling in love (with e)”. http://www.thebookseller.com/blogs/falling-out-love-e.html - last accessed 10/31/2011Jordison, Sat. 03/16/2011. “EU anger over e-book deal portends tough times for publishers” - EU anger over e-book deal portends tough times for publishers | Books | Guardian.co.uk – last accessed 10/30/2011Jones, Hugh and Christopher Benson. 2006. Publishing Law. 3rd edition. London: Routledge. Clark, Giles and Angus Phillips. 2008. Inside Book Publishing. 4th edition. London: Routledge.Amazon Kindle User's Guide - g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/digital/fiona/general/Kindle_User_Guide.pdf – last accessed 10/30/2011Hart, Michael. 12/25/2007. “Project Gutenberg Mission Statement” - http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Gutenberg:Project_Gutenberg_Mission_Statement_by_Michael_Hart – last accessed 31/10/2011