Can't Curl Up With a Cyber Book? Think Again

At that point, new electronic ink (called "E-ink") will print the entire volume onto the pages of your book, in the print size and style you prefer. This "Last Great Book" will be able to hold as many volumes at the entire U.S. Library of Congress (20 million). It will offer wireless electronic access to, and purchase of, any book available in the world. It will allow the reader to self-assemble books on any special subject--and even to project animated video clips.

"Such a device is, in effect, a single-volume library," says MIT physicist and E-ink inventor Joe Jacobson.

Already, traditional book publishers and online booksellers such as Amazon.com may sense the beginning of the end.

"It's not a question of if. It's a question of when. Electronic downloadable books make too much sense for it not to happen," Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon.com, said recently.

On July 29, Peanut Press, a new electronic publisher in Wayland, Maine, announced it would sell fiction and nonfiction "straight from publishers' front lists." That is, Peanut would offer new books electronically at the same time that traditional publishers are bringing them out on paper in stores. According to Peanut, a division of one major publishing company already has contracted to participate.

Indeed, in the time it took you to read this, more mind-boggling leaps have been made in the virtual publishing world.