As I'm still stuck in the technological black hole that is deepest darkest Suffolk, I've asked our Digital Publisher Sara Lloyd to expand on the email she pinged off to me last week after reading her Friday copy of Guardian supplement g2...
To adulterate a joke made by that funny doctor bloke Dr Phil Hammond on Have I Got News for You last night, "a qualification as 'Head of Digital Publishing' for a major international publisher is really no substitute for clairvoyancy". I'd like to start from this point to avoid jokes made at my expense later; predicting the future has always been wrought with hazards and I lay no specialist claims to being able to do so.
However, I did get just a teensy weensy bit excited to read Andrew Marr's feature, 'Curling up with a good eBook' in g2 on Friday. This much loved and respected journalist, broadcaster and writer was given one of the latest eReaders, an Irex Iliad, to road test for a month. It was a case of 'bibliophile, or perhaps bibliomaniac, meets book-killer', as he so Andrew-Marr-ishly put it. You can read the article for yourself, but the results were surprising, in some ways. This key proponent of the book as beautiful object / thing to be read in the bath argument and sniffer of dusty covers in second hand bookshops was 'reluctantly impressed' with his ebook. He could even see a future in which he'd choose the e-version of 'a dozen new novels or biographies' to replace his bulging book bag when travelling, and he could certainly see the advantage of this when combined with an ability to download all the newspapers, magazines and other 'throwaway' content that he needs to digest on a regular basis.
For me the existing ereaders on the market still don't cut it. The 'killer device' - an iPod for books - isn't with us yet, but I think this generation of ereaders could be the beginning of a quiet revolution. As major Internet and computing players enter the fray to carve out a piece of the ebook market which they all believe could be round the corner and the 'download generation' graduate into the consumers of tomorrow, the ground has got to shift. Hasn't it?