We have all become used to reading on screen nowadays; we don't print to read an email, a blog, maybe even, for some of us, business or research reports, or news. So, how about using screens without computers, or reading books without paper? The technologies that are making electronic readers pleasant to use are starting to coalesce, and digital ink is rapidly becoming the accepted standard: no visual difficulties in bright or dark conditions.

2008 saw much development of the electronic reader market. Amazon's Kindle had already been released in the previous November in the USA and reached sales of 400,000 during 2008; the Sony Reader, released in 2006, reached its 300,000th sale; and there were about 20 devices on the market. News and blogs from both the publishing and the technology industries regularly discussed the ins and outs of ereaders and the marketplace.

The range of products is amazing and sometimes exciting. Polymer Vision has developed Readius, a pocket ereader with a compact yet extendable display; Plastic Logic's product emulates an A4 sheaf of papers in electronic form version: Orange have trialled delivery of newspaper subscriptions in France and are developing their own device (although, the Japanese are not only delivering books to mobile phones, they are writing them on their phones too). You can even read books on your Nintendo DS, as seen on TV. This flurry of activity and competition will serve the consumer well in the end.

But exactly what do we the readers want? Leaving news and work-related reading aside, do we want to read electronic books? The knee-jerk reaction is "No!" We like proper books with pages we can flick through, get our noses into, get lost in and emerge satisfied. Books have been part of our psyche for 500 years, if you start counting from the advent of printing: a hard habit to break. Ereaders are fads, surely.

But surely not. Our knee-jerks will start to point in the opposite direction, if only in the desperation to have a low-weight device that releases us from our desks, and I believe the shifts in attitude will happen soon. Indeed, why use paper, glue and ink and strain our resources? When travelling, why carry kilos when only one or two hundred grams will do? Why disturb a sleeping partner by keeping your light on? Or by reading a hefty tome? And changing to a large font size may become handy later in life. Ereaders will become common place later if not sooner, if not this year.

So now, online discussions often linger on the remaining issues: the capabilities of the device itself (wireless access? usability?) and the price; digital rights management, copyright and sharing books (and will we still have second-hand books?); and the format of the books themselves. But none of these will stop the revolution; they didn't for the music and video industries.

If you are thinking about buying an ereader, the review by The Register and its ensuing comments is a pretty good start on what to think about. Most of the sentiments frequently expressed on this topic are expressed therein, and it is interesting that even the recommended reader is not fully endorsed in the comments. Indeed, another review, What not to buy in 2008 written for the Christmas season and including "what to buy" recommendations, doesn't make any recommendation. (But this may be because ereaders are not at the centre of the author's radar and are placed under the "Cool Gadgets" section rather than being promoted to their own, alongside mini-PCs and home entertainment, for example.) Uptake seems to be relatively low, for example compared to the Wii: products and contents have not yet fully matured.

Personally, I like the look of the Readius with its rollable screen. It is the right size, shape and, at 115 grams, the right weight. The traditional readers weigh in at 220-290 grams, which would just be a bit too much in my bag, never mind my pocket. I am interested to know, though, whether it can be easily rotated for left-handed use/right-handed holding whenever I want.

Then again, sometime I want to read news on the move and I have long dreamt of a foldable digital paper, updatable with the latest edition, just like the real thing. Here enters the Flexible Display Center at ASU: someone else's imagination has been there too, though I'm not sure if it is foldable. Certainly, the Readius's screen technology, rollable and foldable, is really what I would be looking for in this dream, but without the casing.

But, I believe the most important factor is what the ereader can actually display: all articles, books and newspapers would be best of all. No one should be restricted in their choice of books according to their ereader: publishers need to publish in a standard format, using, for example, the .epub format to transform the content to an ebook format. Indeed many belong to the International Digital Publishing Forum that produces these standards.

Also, buying a book should mean receiving all the versions you need to be able to read the book on any of your computer-based devices, your ereader and all other devices you may have. We shouldn't have to be committed to one particular device for the rest of our reading lives. That, surely, defeats the point, the very potential for durable books.

Sales of ebooks are still increasing in the USA. There will come a time when we decide to start reading even more on screen.