For those with an interest in the adoption of e-books and e-readers (hopefully that'll be the majority of PrintWeek readers, if not it should be), may I point you in the direction of this excellent Michael Bywater piece on Amazon's Kindle for The Independent.

Bywater is a great wordsmith, and as he explains in the article he's been writing about and using the latest gadgets for a long time now. In my book (ho-ho) his views count for something when it comes to technology.

One of the points made in the piece precisely echoes a conversation I had with the boss of a book printing business last year. I love books as we know them, but the appeal of an e-reader becomes abundantly apparent when trying to squeeze the requisite number of volumes into one's suitcase ahead of a holiday. Although depending on the morals of your fellow travellers said e-reader is rather less likely to still be on your sunbed after a quick swim than the print and paper version.

Bywater's typography point is also well made. Years ago I was given a book that, for some inexplicable reason, was typeset throughout in 18pt Univers bold. It was a complete abomination and although the content was interesting it was so unpleasant to read that I gave up.

Good typography and the appropriate choice of typeface enhances the reading process, so for e-readers like the Kindle to reduce it to a homogenous sea of Caecilia is depressing indeed.

Meanwhile, as posited at the FIPP conference a couple of weeks back, it's intriguing that such "death of the book" devices could turn out to be the saviour of newspapers and indeed some magazines.