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Why did e-book sales first emerge as a mainstream business in the late 1990s?
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e-book
An e-reader on display at the Frankfurt Book Fair, Germany, 2012.
The e-book industry first emerged as a mainstream business in the late 1990s primarily due to the introduction of companies like Peanut Press. These businesses began selling book content specifically designed for reading on personal digital assistants (PDAs), which were the early handheld predecessors to modern smartphones and tablet computers.1