Indeed, many publishing executives like to argue that the digital revolution could usher in a golden age of reading in which many more people will be exposed to digital texts.
The reason the program existed in the first place was to give independent bookstores a way to get involved in the growing market of ebooks and digital reading, to give them a chance to survive the ebook revolution.
Before Mr Khatami's election, the government had frowned on innocent-seeming pleasures like the theatre, western music and novel-reading, fearing that such art forms would subvert the austere Islamic order established in the aftermath of the Iranian Revolution 20 years ago.