- guardian.co.uk, Friday September 5 2008 00.01 BST
- The Guardian, Friday September 5 2008
Waterstone’s has launched an online store for downloading ebooks to coincide with the new device. Photograph: Martin Argles
If yesterday marked the beginning of the end for the printed book, it looked like a slow death. An hour after the Sony Reader, the latest generation of electronic reading devices to hit the UK, went on sale, the country's biggest bookshop had shifted precisely two.
To be fair to Waterstone's, which has joined forces with Sony to market the £199 device, several thousand had already been preordered.
The chain also stresses that the Reader is not intended to replace the printed page but complement it, particularly for commuters or travellers who like a selection of reading material but prefer not to be weighed down.
Tucked inside a tan case about the size of a slim paperback, and weighing little more than one at 260 grams, the Reader can hold up to 160 average-sized books, more with a memory card.
Recent technological history is littered with ebooks, many of which were hailed as the future of reading only to sell modestly before being discontinued. Aside from a battery life comprising almost 7,000 page "turns", the reason Sony believes the Reader will prove different is its screen. The crisp black and white display, known as "e ink", is intended to replicate the printed page and can be read at an angle and in direct sunlight.
As the device went on sale at 205 branches, Waterstone's simultaneously launched an e-book website, offering thousands of titles to download. If the Reader is the book world's iPod, then this is the iTunes.
"It's not designed to replace the book at all," said Deborah Tilley, of Waterstone's. "This is designed to be an evolution, a different way of reading."
The most immediate appeal would appear to be for the time-short, space-tight business traveller. The first sale at the Waterstone's Piccadilly branch in central London was to a man on his way to Heathrow for a transatlantic flight.
Another customer, Steve Goodacre, an insurance manager, said he was impressed: "I like to travel light. If I'm going away on a holiday I'll pack several books, but very often I'm going at short notice and I like to carry only hand luggage. This is great."
Others will need more convincing. Ben, 31, was happily slumped in an armchair immersed in a copy of Piers Morgan's autobiography. "I love opening a brand-new book - I'll never read anything else - and the way the feel of it changes, page by page, as you get through it. I can't see the appeal of ebooks. Then again, when newspapers first went online I thought the same thing, and these days I only really ever read them on the internet."
It is the electronic newspaper which could prove the Reader's undoing. It needs a cable for downloading, while one of its key competitors, the Amazon Kindle - a big seller in the US and expected here this year - is a wireless device. Kindle users can thus sign up to receive an electronic edition of their favourite paper every day.
