Let’s pretend that the power-hunger, display resolution and contrast (that is actually what makes reading off a screen tiring, the fact that ink on paper has superlative contrast) problems have been solved. Let’s also give the device a USP (do you like my use of dilbert-speak) of being water resistant like a watch, so it is better than a book, as I can read it in the bath fearlessly.

Whether it can do pointless extras is immaterial because already we are looking at a device that will sell contract-free at £200-300 (and I use that mobile phone terminology advisedly).

So what do you do with such a gorgeous looking device? Simple, you give it away just like the mobile phone companies do. If bookshops are clever, they will get in on this and be beating off their customers with sticks, because they will be able to sell dead-tree books (as they will forever..ever..ever), but get in the bookpod of 2010 or whenever it would be.

Hordes of people will not care about DRM, and doing what people have been doing for centuries with books and joining a private subscription library, because they will have something shiney! for free!*

And the bookshops will still sell the musty books, as the ‘gift’ version of a book to put under the tree. Oh the booktrade will continue to wither and die, but it will only collapse so far. Just as Ikea will never put antique shops out of business.

*although of course free means just-give-us-power-of-attorney-over-your-finances, just as with mobile phones.

I can also see a device like this having lots of further uses beyond the novel, e.g. newspapers (if they haven’t died a well-earnt death by then). Another example would be academic textbooks which are, I believe, a large part of the ebook market as it now stands. I frequently see people reading these on trains and buses, or at least the ones light enough to carry. These would greatly benefit from manipulation, searching, copying and pasting, inserting metadata into reading list software, and so on. The competitor that provides this will win. Similarly, why not have the ability to put personal/company papers and reports and so forth on it? Business people I fear would relish the opportunity to produce extra gadgets on the train table: laptop, Blackberry, mobile phone, ebook reader.

In conclusion, a few plugs and sockets wouldn’t go amiss, artfully disguised. I understand the appeal of having something that is just a book, but I can’t imagine marketing something on the grounds that you can’t do some things with it. The DRM issue has to be faced off legally I think.

On a more serious note, current e-book approaches mean that you buy and download a file; keeping the file is your responsibility. If you’ve backed it up, fine; if you lose it, tough (you don’t get to get another one for free, same as with a real book). The problem is that, if you bought a simple downloadable file, there’s nothing to stop you giving it to all your mates for free; this is what all the “DRM” stuff is about, which tries to lock down your file so only you can read it, and only on “approved” devices. The point of the device above is that it sidesteps this by not actually giving you a file that you can give to friends. The automatic backup approach when you charge it might be a possibility, though. Clever.

Gavin: I can’t think of a reason why a competitor’s device shouldn’t be allowed to connect to the same back end as the device above, and if the back end kept a record of what you’d bought (based on your credit card number) then you should be able to get them again. Careful on the “non-open formats” charge, though; that’s not the problem here. The books themselves could be (and probably would be) in HTML or something equally open. There is, however, basically no way to give someone a file and stop them giving it to other people for free; DRM is a lost cause. This tries to get around that by not actually giving you a file; open formats or not are not part of the equation.

There are issues with the back end remembering which books you’ve bought (what if you lose your credit card *and* the device? what if the FBI subpoena it to find out who’s been reading The Communist Manifesto?) but iTunes has similar problems, I expect.