Following Sony’s belated entry to the UK market, the likely arrival here of Amazon’s Kindle, and the already available Iliad, there’s been a lot of talk about the future of the humble-yet-mighty book.

Jeanette Winterson wrote an impassioned, if Luddite, piece about why she’s not a fan, though somewhat muddled up with a defence of the importance of spelling correctly… a somewhat linked, but discrete topic. Her main criticism is that ebooks don’t make it any easier to get books into people’s hands.

Well, I do and I don’t agree. Not sitting on the fence: I want to make an important distinction.

I don’t believe the ‘dedicated device’ route is a good way forward for reading ebooks. Particularly via the Sony eReader approach, which (in true Sony style, limits you to buying a proprietary DRM format of books that is at odds with the best range of ebooks available online, over at the excellent Fictionwise.

And there’s good news. If you own a decent smartphone, you can read books in a variety of formats right there – on your iPhone/iPod Touch (by far my favourite ebook reading device to date), on Windows Mobile devices (I’ve had a couple of those) and on old fashioned PDAs. I started reading ebooks back in 2002 on my Palm T3, and I’ve never looked back.

The screens have become gradually more eye-friendly. The range of books is slowly but steadily increasing. The price is appropriate – a little less than a printed book. Reader: this is the way forward. And as the digital ink that makes the Sony device look so good gains currency, the experience can only improve.

And if you go down this path, the green credentials of ebook reading are pretty decent too: you’re simply expanding the value from a device you already have, so no overhead there. And no trees.

Book 2.0 in action

Crucially, it means that hefty tomes, such as Neal Stephenson’s new 800 page wopper, Anathem, is reduced to something that puts no additional strain on my briefcase for my commute.

So, better screens on existing ‘smart devices’ = less eyestrain, less backstrain, less bagstrain. And removes the ‘barrier to entry’ issue from Ms Winterson et al… it’s not just putting books in the hands of people who haven’t tended to read them, it’s putting the opportunity for entire libraries there.

= result.

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