= 1,000 to 5,000 eBooks from 1998 to 2002
From 1998 to 2000, there was a steadfast average of 36 new eTexts per month. In May 1999, there were 2,000 eTexts. The 2000th eText was Don Quijote, by Cervantes (published in 1605), in Spanish, its original language.
Around 40 eTexts per month were released during the 1st semester 2001, and 50 eTexts during the 2nd semester. Released in December 2000, the 3000th eText was the third volume of A l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs (In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower), by Marcel Proust (published in 1919), in French, its original language.
Released in October 2001, the 4000th eText was The French Immortals Series, in English. Published in 1905 by Maison Mazarin, Paris, this book is an anthology of short fictions by authors belonging to the renowned French Academy (Académie française), notably Emile Souvestre, Pierre Loti, Hector Malot, Charles de Bernard and Alphonse Daudet.
Available in April 2002, the 5000th eText was The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci, which he wrote at the beginning of the 16th century. A text that is still in the Top 100 of downloaded texts in 2005.
In 1988, Michael Hart chose to digitize Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Peter Pan because they each fitted on one 360 K disk, the standard of the time. Fifteen years later, in 2002, 1.44 M is the standard disk and ZIP is the standard compression. The practical file size is about 3 million characters, more than long enough for the average book. The digitized ASCII version of a 300-page novel is 1 M. A bulky book can fit in two ASCII files, that can be downloaded as is or in ZIP format.
An average of 50 hours is necessary to get an eText selected, copyright-cleared, scanned, proofread, formatted and assembled.
A few numbers are reserved for "special" books. For example, eText number 1984 is reserved for George Orwell's classic, published in 1949, and still a long way from falling into the public domain.
In 2002, around 100 eTexts were released per month. In Spring 2002, Project Gutenberg's eTexts represented 1/4 of all the public domain works freely available on the web and listed nearly exhaustively by The Internet Public Library (IPL). An impressive result thanks to the relentless work of 1,000 volunteers in several countries.