ABSTRACT
By the mid-1990s, the growth of internet service providers and the development of user-friendly World Wide Web browsers such as Netscape’s Navigator had driven exponential uptake of the internet across Western societies. The codex’s historical role as a receptacle for scared scripture and the cultural esteem in which the book had long been held made the prospect of its imminent erasure especially fraught, exacerbating the culture/commerce dialectic underpinning book culture as a whole. The instigators of the 1990s death of the book debate and its most strident voices – the Technophorics – were euphoric about the possibilities of digital technology. Constant changes in digital platforms, unstable global markets and the vagaries of consumer demand make the publishing sector highly volatile and unpredictable, and public loyalty to the codex runs surprisingly deep. The nascent eBook market was hampered by incompatible hardware and software formats, creating an anarchic landscape that proved unappealing to the majority of potential consumers.
