The first full week of March is commonly known as Read an E-Book Week. This holiday week is designed to encourage people to read more and authors to write more e-books. During this week, many book retailers and publishers will offer certain books at a reduced price or even for free.

This allows everyone who wants to participate in this week to have the means to do so. Besides, there are plenty of free-of-charge e-books already available that people can read all year round.

These are books that are in the public domain, such as “Wuthering Heights,” “Pride and Prejudice,” and “Frankenstein.” Many authors also offer the first books of a series as a way to hook readers into buying the rest of the series.

The History of Read an E-Book Week

This holiday was created by Rita Toews, an author from Winnipeg who was attempting to find a way to get her books into people’s hands. She decided to begin writing e-books in 2004, a time when e-books were just beginning to take off. She created the holiday as a way to promote herself and other e-book writers who were creating digital content.

Facts About E-Books

Let’s go over some of the interesting facts that we have learned about e-books and would like to now share with everyone. The following facts are the ones that we feel every reader of these digital books will find most interesting:

• In 2013 alone, over 512 million e-books were sold in the United States.
• In 2016, e-books accounted for almost a quarter of all books sold worldwide.
• Over 4,000 e-books are published on Amazon every single day.
• The first ISBN for an e-book was obtained by Kim D. Blagg.
• In 1996, Project Gutenberg reached 1,000 titles.

Observing Read an E-Book Week

The best way to observe this holiday week is by downloading an e-book and reading it. It’s also a good week to share your favorite authors with the world using the hashtag #ReadAnEbookWeek on social media. It’s also a good week for potential published authors to share their works with the world by publishing their books for the first time.