Over the past few years, various e-readers have been sparking up in the press- most notably the Amazon Kindle and the Sony Reader. And now Google is jumping in as well to, in Microsoft’s opinion, monopolise the digital book format, a sure sign that something big is happening.

I’ve always quite snobbishly rejected e-books and their e-readers, like I reject buying digital albums.  I like owning actual touchable books just as I like owning real CDs with their printed inserts and cumbersome cases. I like the look of them piled up on my shelves, I like that my friends can come over, have a browse and borrow one.

But I know that there are a lot of people different to me.  There are two kinds of people when it comes to music- those that care about this sort of sentimental clutter of physical CD’s and Vinyl’s and those who want to remove it and go seamlessly digital.  Maybe the same sort of division is there for books.

However, I strongly believe the e-readers themselves won’t be going mainstream like the MP3 player.

Firstly, MP3 players win hands down over CD’s for listening to music on the go because they give you much more choice and take up a lot less space.  With books you don’t need such a huge choice on the go (you only really read one book at a time) and e-readers take up as much space as a book.  Secondly, CD’s get listened to again and again but books generally only get read once.  The ‘anti-clutters’ who don’t want the clutter of books on their shelves, just get rid of their books once read, one less reason to fork out for an expensive e-reader.  And thirdly, books beat all of the technology currently available that tries to emulate it.  They have infinite battery life, provide more reliable storage than any hard drive ever invented and an unbeatably user friendly interface.   Kindles have a long way to go to beat the book in these respects.

Even if Kindles and Readers do have some success once the prices drop, it’s going to be short lived.  A mainstream convergence device (tablet iTouch perhaps?) will be here soon that does it all.  What a waste of space anyway to carry around such a huge screen that doesn’t even play video or let you check your e-mails.

When this happens, the format of the e-book could take off leaving the e-readers themselves as a hic cup of technology’s past and people like me desperately holding on to their beloved bookshelves, while the world of the book changes irreversibly around them.

K