Hi Sarah

Well, umm, kind of.

I read the article too and thought it interesting (although, I have to admit, a bit of a Macmillan plug/fix/cosy - what with him being published by Picador and plugging the Macmillan offering). But he's about the most incorruptible person on the planet.

Personally, I still don't feel the hand of history on my shoulder. In fact, I wouldn't call the new generation of ereaders a "quiet revolution". Not by any stretch of the imagination. The only thing quiet about it is the consumer adoption and, well, everything outside of the book trade and press.

For the last 18 months, at an increasingly accellerated and hysterical pitch, everyone has been talking about the "ipod moment" in downloadable books / ereaders. Trotting out the old death of the book arguments. Worst of all, the least clairvoyant person in the world, Bill Gates - eradicator of spam - this week announced the death of print. Cue the inverse.

But quiet? All of the major publishers (yourselves, HC, RH, Penguin and any number of third party optimists from Google down) have thrown millions after a market that doesn't yet exist, and for which the technology is decidedly iffey (let's not forget that the irex is very very expensive, and the Sony reader not yet available in the country, and you can't perform some of the most basic functions of a computer on these devices. We'll wait and see about the Kindle). But at the moment, they are little better than storage devices with screens.

We all have a professional interest in overstating the *potential* of these devices to revolutionsise publishing, given that this is where publishing is spending all of its cash (rather than actually interesting readers in books, but that's another conversation). But as I've said before, there are maybe better things to spend money on, and ooh - suits you, emperor.

Of course, a wireless device that delivers my RSS, manuscripts, technical specs, emails, music, web pages and anything else text-based (or video for that matter) whilst looking sexy, revitalising me (in the eyes of my peers) and the publishing industry, in one fell swoop, is appealing.

It just ain't here yet.

But the iPhone...?

Oh dear, Peter, I think that's what they call splitting hairs, isn't it? I was hardly suggesting that Andrew Marr's 'reluctantly impressed' is a resounding endorsement of the current breed of ereader, nor that print will die within the year. I was merely observing with interest a change in climate to the extent that someone like him would even consider a future in which ebooks might feature (and you're right, he is entirely uncorruptible; I had no idea he was writing this piece until I read it on Friday).

And I certainly wasn't suggesting that an Irex Iliad or anything like it is going to change the world as we know it. I think the phrase I actually used was that the curent ereaders 'don't cut it.' I'm with you on the idea that the Apple iPhone or indeed another newcomer might change things substantially though. I do think that this latest batch of ereaders is significant however, just because they are a damn sight better than the last lot of ten years ago and because the world has changed a lot since then. I'm guessing that these might be first generation ereaders which we'll look back on and realise were the forerunners of the killer device to come.

I have to say I also fundamentally disagree with your premise that it suits publishers to whip up any kind of hysteria about a possible e-future. Most of us are very comfortable sitting on a well-established print business with which we feel familiar; there are many more publishers sitting on their laurels spouting nonsense about how beautiful books are as objects and how they are bath-proof than there are publishers with a real eye to the future, thinking about what might happen if a generation of readers grows up who feel differently. The idea that this position might be a defense by publishers who are investing heavily in digitisation projects is also deeply flawed. Most publishers aren't investing heavily in an e-future because they can't afford it. A few of the big players are starting modest digitisation initiatives and most are at least thinking about digital workflows, storing in digital formats and so on, but I can only think of one - maybe two - major publishers who are throwing 'silly money' at it. In fact, my general sense is that we are not doing enough as an industry and that we are not doing it fast enough or creatively enough.

In addition, whilst we all talk endlessly about needing to engage with the 'download generation', there lurks a fundamental issue behind this: not, how will we deliver content in the right format to appeal to the download generation, but, how will we convince them even to read anything in more than bite-sized chunks? Getting ourselves into the headspace of today's teenagers and young children is going to be a key challenge for all of us.

Hi Sara

As you say, the download generation tend to read in bite-sized chunks, and therefore as Marr says, the first type of content to be widely read on a handheld device is likely to be the 'mounds of newsprint'. PDAs and mobile phones provide this service already, and we're right in the middle of the evolution of these sorts of devices at the moment - look at T-Mobile's current internet-on-the-move promotional campaign.

Marr also refers to the 'work briefing' - emails are also bite-sized (well, good ones are...) and therefore easily managed by a hand-held. That's why we've seen the Blackberry boom.

So will we see handheld consumption of larger pieces of content - books, and company reports? Well, the reasons for adopting digital books are less obvious. The two big advantages to digital reading - timeliness and portability - are simply not as valuable when it comes to books. Marr says in his article "I carry round a bulging bag of books, and on holiday it's bigger still" - but I wonder how typical he is.

For these reasons, the idea of a book-killing device is a little far-fetched. Going away on holiday for a weekend, you'd be unlikely to need more than one book, you hopefully wouldn't want to take any work and you might even not want your mobile phone with you. So you'd take a paperback. But travelling to a meeting on a train you would want your work papers, your email and a phone - and possibly several books, for reference and research when writing an article or a report, and for reading for pleasure when you'd finished that and were bored with staring out of the window.

So there will be demand for print books to exist side-by-side with books on hand-held devices for a long time to come, but perhaps digital books will only be for certain sorts of uses by certain sorts of people. Mobile phones suit this demographic and have already evolved to provide email and web-browsing. So they are very likely to evolve further to accommmodate comfortable book reading using e-ink or whatever follows it - and will display high quality video too (in fact video may follow texting and web-browsing as the next great reason to upgrade your mobile).

But I'd suggest that the impact for change will not just be on the device, but also on the content. Video content is changing as a result of YouTube, emails are shorter as a result of Blackberrying, and the iPod has given the single, rather than the album, a new lease of life. So it's certain that books will change too. Shorter chapters, subscription-based price models, even greater interaction?

I agree with your suggestion about the industry not being creative enough, but I'm hardly surprised. Maybe there's a conceptual leap to be taken. In 20 years time the digital native may do plenty of reading on a handheld device - but he might not call what he is reading a 'book' at all, and so neither should we.

I think we and the National Treasure that is Mr Marr are all - sorry to say - just TOO OLD to really understand what is going to happen when the iPod moment happens with ereaders. It will be about fashion, not reading.
MP3 players had been around for ages before iPods hit the street, but what made the iPod an object of desire was a combination of great looks followed by capacity. It was very cool to be seen with - for those of us who remember, it's like when the Walkman arrived and your mum and dad bought you a cheaper non-brand version. They didn't get that the one we wanted was the Walkman, because (to parahrase someone else) it's the label stupid! It made a statement (not least that you had enough music to fill your iPod - I can remember the "my library is bigger than yours" conversations taking place when I got my first iPod).
So far no ereader has made a fashion statement. They look functional and are functional, not cool. When one does - and it will be multi-functional (mobile phone, music, RSS etc etc) - they will be embraced first by cool hunters (esp younger readers) and then everyone else trying to look cool. Just like the iPod, just like MySpace, just like YouTube and the good old interweb itself.
All these innovations experience a noticable "greying" of their market when they become mainstream. This is because early adopters are predominantly young and are followed by parents and grown up kids like me.
The fatuous argument that books will stick around because you can "drop them in the bath" depresses the hell out of me. Of course, paper books will stick around, not least because they make better wallpaper than electronic files (sames as CDs), but the idea that a new generation who read their lessons from eBooks and use smart boards rather than blackboards in lessons will stick with paper because of tradition and literary heritage reflects the middle class ghetto in which most of the trade lives.
It also - as you both seem to agree - presupposes that all commercial fiction/nonfiction is equal. Most of it is disposable. An ereader is ideal for the majority of cheap commercial chart fodder, which will never appear in one of those leather bound heritage libraries on offer in the Sunday supps to people who don't read but want to look like they do.
Finally, what I can't wait to see is how creative people take up the challenge of creating a whole new type of reading experience with ereaders - mooks - combining, games, music and animation in one reading experience. Now that is exciting, and I predict we get an ebook that shakes cages like that, then everyone will want one.

For a long time I have been a mega-sceptic on e-books. I suggest that the very term gets us thinking in the wrong tramlines (like whether or not they wil work in the bath, or whether carrying one reader around makes up for lugging a sack-load of books). I think the most interesting thing about the Google-book-library-notquitesure-what-it-is project is that it is more than anything about making books ACCESSIBLE through web editions. It is really a library project, which in its complete ramification appears rather threatening to librarians and publishers. So I suggest that the really interesting questions are really about digital libraries, not about e-books. Publishers who dont like the Google-inspired, though not explicity proposed, proposition of free access to everything, should be working on models for reasonable-but-surely-not-free access to anything and everything. Quite a lot of it free, but not all of it, so that authors and publishers continue to earn a crust.

But I very much agree with Sara that there is a sense, in the air this spring, that everything is going to change. Not immediatly. I see Andrew Marr as being a good litmus test for this. Maybe not this year. But next year or in 18 months, surely in five years time a lot will have changed and we may be playing in a completely different game (see how quickly the music game has changed. Not just Popular and Rock business. The whole music industry is in process of fundamental change. There is no going back.

Books will not be completely displaced (CDs will be -- and I think Danua mistakes the change in putting them parallel with books) but once we can buy decent e-titles the chances are that we will be buying or subscribing a lot more of them in e-versions and they will inevitably be priced lower......

I also agree with Sara that publishers will mostly find this uncomfortable, and especially the older ones of us, will be slow to react. But we should still recognise that some of the changes may be very refreshing. Eg I have always been an eclectic reader (rarely finishing a book before starting 4 others) and I suspect that reading will be incredibly chunked by most of our books being on the web. Gobbetised or chunked or granularised, horrible words but I am sure that is what will happen, is already happening. One of the reasons that YouTube has worked so well and been so innovative is that it has shown how much better TV is when it is gobbetised. So before we become too sniffy about digital libraries and the gobbetisation of literature lets reflect on how beneficial it has been for TV for it all to be available, mostly in 40 second segments, rather than in 40 minute shows. There is nothing at all wrong with 45 seconds or barely 2 pages of Shakespeare. No need always to read the whole play. If there are a lot more accesses to Shakespeare speeches and sonnets, well so much the better.

Pre-roll the ads and roll on the digital revolution!

I wasn't putting CDs on a par with books - listeners to music interact differently with the medium than readers interact with books (tho not necessarily THAT differently, both can involve imagination....). I also think that people will still buy CDs rather than download tracks/albums for much the same reasons people will contune to buy paper books. It is not just about reading or listening - same as with vinyl. Both are nice objects to own, they have decorative value and offer additional material that cannot be provided by an e-version (in fact in this I would argue that CDs are of more value than books as they have lyric books, artwork and pics of the band as well as what music. Many books have maybe a bit from the next book and an author biog, both of which you could replicate in an e-version nor are they lovely to handle added extras only available with the hard copy). Also, displaying CDs and paper books makes a statement about the person who owns them....why else did all those people buy a Brief History of Time and leave it on the coffee table without ever reading it?! Or all those people buy something in a three for two they will never read?
To be honest, I don't think the issue is to e or not to e, but: why aren't publishers embracing every means available to get the words of their authors into the heads ofreaders? It isn't either/or but by any means possible.

I must confess I PRINTED the responses to read them! They are long: maybe a screen is only really for bite-sized bits of info.
In my neck of woods, its the equipment that's prohibitive. I can't see many people paying 400-quid plus and then still having to pay to download each book
Its like that with iPods and iTunes etc. many have them, but I can't think of anybody who actively pays to download. They all just rip or share or download the freebies.

Danuta

At the risk of going off topic. I agree with you that people like CDs, but mostly for the kind of extraneous reason that they like the artwork and the leaflets etc. And Apple and other e-music vendors have made a huge mistake in not seeing how essential the bits and bobs are. Technically, to use the proper jargon, the 'metadata' -- which makes all the more difference when the content is only digital. Also publishers have tended to underestimate this, though they are quite good at doing it, and Google have hugely under-estimated the importance of context and meta-data in the way they have build Google BS (they now eem to have begun to realise this). To see a business that really understands the importance of context and metadata one should look at www.librarything.com (which I am sure you know).

The argument about why CDs really are dead was compellingly put for me by Mark Cuban. Whether or not we want to buy CDs (I still do), hardly anyone these days buys CD players. Many of us want to have all our CDs on an iPod sized device. Once one accepts that really nobody know wants to buy/plugin/connectto/find space for a CD player, it becomes clear that the music business badly needs a new way of selling stuff which people will want to collect. I also agree with Mark Cuban that this will probably lead to some sort of subscription service (ie a library -- not a sack full of CDs). But it will have to be better organised than iTunes. See Cuban

http://www.blogmaverick.com/2007/04/01/some-quick-thoughts-on-the-music-business/

Books do not suffer from any of this .... We dont need to buy lecterns or book readers, and most of us are quite attracted to the thought of having to find room for another bookshelf.

Must admit I like the idea of finding another room for my CDs - and vinyl! Yes, I agree to an extent with what you say, but I don't think we should underestimate the speed with which consumers - especially young ones - can evolve, and if a decent e-reader came along (they are all a bit rubbish, but then I use a Mac and only the lovely to look at will do), then I think the paper book would have competition - note not be wiped out, but be forced to share its market with digital files. I constantly send my books to charity shops because I simply haven't space, and don't regard everything I read as collectable/worth keeping. In their case an e-library would be quite attractive. I could even be used to store notes, pages etc that may come in useful for other articles. One final thing, even though practically every one of the tracks from the new Artic Monkeys album entered the download singles charts, saes of the CD shot it to number one. Proof that people want to show off their cultural products.

I had an email a few weeks ago from Book Marketing asking me to participate in the ‘British Book Survey’. It contained the usual questions about where do I buy books, how many etc and about three quarters of the way through it went all environmental on me. It got to a section where it asked If I considered, 'The social and environmental policies of the publishing company' and 'Whether the production of a book was carbon neutral'

From there it went to ask - 'Do you think it would be more environmentally-friendly to buy and read printed books or to download and read books electronically?'

Now I understand the reasons for the question about downloading books, but it's suddenly become a green issue. There’s an imperative of guilt being introduced into the equation.

The fact is, if anyone bothered to think about it for just a little while there’s a huge environmental issue over whether we should be downloading books to read on hand held PDAs, computer screens or some other new portable electronic gizmo rather than having them being printed on paper. There’s the cost to the environment of manufacturing these things, the cost of the batteries or the electricity to charge the batteries or device and then there’s the small matter of disposing of the gizmo when we replace it after a few years because some new super whizzy gizmo has come along.

We are becoming a guilt driven society where all forms of pleasure will be denied to us on the basis that they are environmentally damaging. Extreme? Of course it is, but don’t you just feel that’s how things are being presented to us when you watch the news or listen to politicians? I know I do. Oh yes, and having banned books on environmental grounds, then we’ll ban the gizmos because the electricity to power them is becoming scarce because the politicians failed to grasp the small matter of security of production. Society, as we know it, is in for a shock.

Unlike most Gizmos the iLiad can provide a near paper reading experience, but it is not just about books. In our information rich age the distribution of printed information is a costly process. There are many people who have to read and understand information on a daily basis. Reading from a computer screen is not a rewarding experience. People tend to print information from their computers for a number of reasons. The primary reason is to take a copy away with them, and the second is to read it in comfort, in detail and to make notes on the paper. One factor in the desire to read from a printed page is that it offers a more engaging quality of reading experience than a computer screen. There is a greater degree of mental engagement with the printed word and the paper copy offers the opportunity to make notes. Up until very recently there has not been a device that fulfilled the requirements of reading quality, portability, and interactivity. It has been a long time coming but the iLiad fulfils these requirements. This means that the digital revolution is set to encompass the printed word. This is the last digital frontier. It may not happen tomorrow but it will happen soon.
Much printed information is regularly updated. Think about the volume of Legal precedents and procedures, Regulatory information, Working instructions, General Directives and Health and Safety manuals. There is often a legal obligation to keep this information available and up to date. The costs of doing this are the paper and ink, the purchase and maintenance of the printer, the clerical effort to collate and distribute and the clerical effort to file the information to make it available for reference.
A rough calculation shows that the power required to print a page of paper is eighty five times the power needed to display the page on an iLiad. That does not take into account the power or environmental impact of making the paper in the first place or the power used to shred and dispose of it after use.

The iLiad allows large quantities of content to be carried with ease. An iLiad can hold the equivalent of fifty tonnes of printed paper. The professional and academic sectors will be the early adopters. As the device becomes more commonplace, and good quality content become more readily available it will become more widely used as a leisure reading device. It is unlikely to become a fashion statement any more than carrying a book says “I can read", but you will be able to carry a lot of books.