Project Gutenberg founder Michael Hart, who created the first ever ebook, has died aged 64. Launched in 1971 when Hart decided on a whim to type the US Declaration of Independence into a computer, Project Gutenberg is now one of the largest collections of free ebooks in the world. In 1998 he told Wired magazine that “20 or 30 years from now, there’s going to be some gizmo that kids carry around in their back pocket that has everything in it – including our books, if they want”. How right he was, though the rate of progress has been considerably quicker.

Amazon’s latest financial results reported that so far in 2011 its US wing had sold 120 Kindle ebooks for every 100 paperbacks. “Additionally, during this same time period the company has sold three times as many Kindle books as hardcover books,” the company said in a statement. But is the ebook movement really a “ferocious advance upon the bastions of literary culture“? Is it worthy of comparison with Johannes Gutenberg’s 15th century printing press in terms of milestone status?

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With Amazon claiming a breakthrough success for its Kindle, having announced that eBooks now exceed paperback sales on its US site, the BMJ Group is developing its offerings on this platform. Since the beginning of 2010 “for every 100 paperback books Amazon sold, the company sold 115 Kindle books”.

One of the neat little sub-features of Amazon’s Kindle is being able to subscribe to blogs on it. You have to pay a token amount for the privilege, but for Kindle users, it makes sense as the content is delivered to you wirelessly for your favourite blogs. BJSM (British Journal of Sports Medicine) has recently released its popular blog onto the Kindle. The BJSM blog provides the sports medicine, physical activity and exercise performance communities with a forum to interact about a range of relevant issues.

Kindle blogs are fully downloaded onto your Kindle so you can read them even when not wirelessly connected. And unlike RSS readers which often only provide headlines, blogs on Kindle give you full text content and images, and are updated wirelessly throughout the day. More of the BMJ blogs will be making their way on to Kindle in the near future so let us know which you’d like to see first!