Such dreams aren't new. Authors' complaints about stingy publishers probably precede the invention of paper. Publishers, in turn, gripe about the cost of distributing books and taking back those that don't sell. Computer visionaries have predicted that powerful networks, tablet-style computers and other devices would replace physical distribution with a global bazaar of electronic volumes. While the Web has done just that for newspapers and magazines, books have been slower to change.
Most people prefer reading long documents on paper, particularly for recreation.
Relatively few people have bought special-purpose devices for storing and reading books, a market that has been hampered by incompatible file formats. 1stBooks, a unit of Advanced Marketing Technologies LLC in Bloomington, Ind., says consumers have downloaded more than 250,000 copies of books, mainly written by people who aren't well-known authors. Piracy issues' Adobe, by moving to secure its document format, could have a big impact. Adobe estimates that it has distributed more than 100 million copies of its Acrobat software, which is particularly popular in applications where users want a printed page to look just like its image on a computer screen. Acrobat generates files known by the initials PDF, for portable data format.