It can take decades for technology to go mainstream. NTT introduced the first commercial mobile-phone service in 1978, people first started talking about the “internet” in 1974, and even electric bulbs took time to spread their light.

Now another technology that has been around for 20 years may finally go mainstream — the e-book.

Electronic books have had a lot of false dawns. People have had the ability to download books to their computers, phones and other handheld devices for years but so far, in the West at least, few have chosen to do so.

This week Waterstone’s will be hoping to usher in a new chapter in reading when it helps to bring the Sony Reader to the UK.

The Reader is smaller than a hardback, can store up to 160 e-books, comes with a screen that is more restful to read than a computer’s and a battery good for 6,800 continuous page turns — enough power to read War and Peace five times.

Waterstone’s has tens of thousands of titles waiting to be downloaded onto the device from its website, waterstones.com. It is not the first to market. Borders is selling the iLiad but its £399 price tag is hardly mass market. The Reader will cost £199.

And it will not be the last. The e-book push is likely to get hotter later this year when, rumour has it, Amazon will release the UK version of its rival Kindle book reader, capable of downloading books wirelessly from the web. The Kindle costs about £200.

Books are “the last bastion

of analog”, according to Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder and chief proselytiser for the e-book revolution. Just as music, television and other media have moved to the web, so will books, he believes.

Music and other media executives have seen their businesses turned upside down by the shift to digital, but publishers seem cautiously optimistic about the new technology.

“There is a broad audience out there for electronic books,” said John Makinson, chairman and chief executive of Pearson-owned publisher Penguin. “To what extent they will be a major alternative to traditional books, we don’t know. The consumer will decide that.”

Penguin is reissuing classics to take full advantage of the new technology. Its e-book edition of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice comes with extras such as a chronology of the author’s life, recipes and a wealth of period detail. More services are to come.

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