I started my publishing career on the internet in 2003. The technology was primitive by today’s standards, but amazing for the times.

The new Amazon Kindle DX eReader, with 9.7in screen

My first venture involved a static website called The Dial. I created business “How-To” eBooks — by far the easiest to sell — in a desk-top publishing program and converted them to PDF. It was laborious getting the pages to format properly, but the result was satisfying and professional in appearance.

The files were uploaded to a specialized part of the website, from where they could be downloaded by customers paying between $5 and $9 per book. Only the American market was sophisticated and enterprising enough for the products in those days.

I didn’t make a fortune, but it opened my eyes to the attractions of the internet and especially “e” formats. The astonishing thing was, you could actually make money by selling nothing … well, electronic files to be exact. It was cheap, labour intensive at first, but once it was up, the cost factor was negligible. The future had arrived.

Now, mainstream published books are being sold as e-books readable on devices even more convenient than the print versions. Amazon’s Kindle, the market leader, will hold up to 1500 complete titles, obtainable from a free 3G mobile network. While current bestsellers can cost more than discounted print copies, out-of-copyright classics may be downloaded free from Project Gutenberg in attractive rich-text versions.

I had hoped to buy a Kindle over Christmas, but the big 9.7in screen model was unavailable in Britain. A 6in “global” version was purchasable from the American website. We are now hearing that the Kindle DX will be on sale here in a matter of weeks.

Meanwhile, many other models are appearing, from the Sony e-reader to Barnes & Noble’s Nook, which uses Google’s Android operating system. Everyone is piling into this market. It’s the “next big thing” in electronics, mainly because it offers a new platform for newspapers and magazines.

Right now, the market is full of potential but is not quite ready for the big time. A 6in screen is just too small for comfort, little different from the bigger mobile phones. An iPhone has a 3in screen, a BlackBerry Curve has a 2.5in, measured diagonally.

What a 6in screen looks like can be mocked up by folding an A4 sheet of paper in four, that is, folded twice. The A6 result has a 7in diagonal. Chop an inch off it and you’ll see what I mean. The new 10in e-readers (9.7 for the Kindle DX) can be compared in size to a large paperback book, perfect for carrying around — and reading. This technology is set to barnstorm next Christmas.

Imagine what can done with it. School books and lessons could be loaded into these devices via mobile networks and given to students. In the present weather conditions, children would be able to study at home, prompted by emails to their mobiles or even the device itself. Almost certainly, this is the future of education.

Any political party that says it can’t cut a chunk off the education budget, does not understand what this technology is set to do.

Newspapers and magazines also will be revolutionized by large-size e-readers. Currently, there’s hardly a print paper in the world that is not considering charging for content from their internet sites. There simply isn’t enough advertising revenue to go round online.

Rupert Murdoch has signalled that his fleet, which includes The Times (London) and the Wall Street Journal, will adopt a micropayment system (pay-per-article) later this year. The Times is already chopping up comment pieces into two or three pages, a move which increases the number of pageviews, allowing the site to charge more for its advertising space.

From the same stable, The Sun, has pulled its much-read Columnists link from the website, so if you want to read Trevor Kavanagh’s commentary pieces you must buy the paper, page-3 girls and all. Many people wouldn’t be seen dead with it under their arm.

The rival Spectator magazine has recently adopted a “six-ways-to-pay” system, with just a few taster articles given away free online. Everyone is doing it.

The answer, though, lies not in elaborate charging mechanisms, with stingy giveaways that enrage loyal readers, but in the new e-paper and e-ink technology. And imagine the scope for smaller publishers to produce high-quality e-ink magazines and journals, even taking on the big boys.

The more popular blogs could be produced as eMags on subscription, even some of the political commentary sites might benefit, perhaps with extra material not available online. It would be almost like real publishing again.

Syntagma’s prediction for 2010 is that e-readers will become the must-have item for the discerning consumer, and the 10in versions will be how, increasingly, we read newspapers and magazines. In the jargon, we will consume news and comment on electronic, book-sized, wafer-thin devices, paid for by subscription, with daily downloads via 3G mobile networks.

Already, some American papers and magazines are testing the waters. As with simple e-books back in 2003, they are way ahead of the game.

Newspapers will survive. But not as we know them now.

So, here’s a New Year toast to e-ink.

John Evans

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I keep repeating that this site is non-political. And so it is.

You can hear a “but” coming, though, can’t you? Well, you’re wrong, it’s a “however”.

However, Syntagma has 90 American readers for every Brit, so, conscious as we are that politics is big news in the States right now, we have a small announcement to make:

Gordon Brown, the British Prime Minister, is coming to visit you this week.

Ignoring the deafening silence, I just want to bring you up to date on Broonie’s progress. Frankly it’s a regression of unparalleled proportions.

Leaving aside my own psychological assessment of him when he first came to office last year, yesterday we were treated to the most devastating political assassination by a journalist that I’ve ever read.

Even if you’re not interested in politics, read it as a master class in the art of personal destruction, much as you might tackle Machiavelli’s The Prince.

It’s all the more calamitous for Brown because the first half gives him his due, albeit in back-handed fashion. It’s what comes next that hits home. Matthew Parris, a journalist at The Times (London) and a broadcaster of great wit, provides us with a forensic deconstruction of Gordon Brown which overflows with such penetrating psychological insight that Brown must have shrivelled up when he read it.

Already far behind in the polls and with ratings only ever matched by Neville Chamberlain, Brown is practically dead in the water politically. Now read this extraordinary coup de grace.

Here it is.

The cartoon is by the brilliant Peter Brooke, also of The Times. It features Gordon Brown after a painting of a gruesome nude woman by Lucien Freud which sold for countless millions recently.

Today, for some reason, I’ve been reviewing how I consume news and commentary, both on- and offline. It must be the persistent wind and rain outside.

This is not going to make a long article, so I’ll get straight to the point.

I live in England where, contrary to Robert Scoble, we have a superb selection of national broadsheet newspapers, plus a dubious pot of red-top tabloids that entertain us from time to time with their wild excesses — though none quite as bad as some in the U.S.

I find I tend to consume hard news — like “Obama wins primary”, “Brown reneges on solemn promise” — on TV rolling news programs, principally the BBC’s News 24. Never for more than 20 minutes, though, because nothing is more life dehancing than watching the same clips over and over — unless they’re about you, of course.

Tech news is best read online. Techmeme, TechCrunch (and the other Crunches) and Robert Scoble put the print press in the shade. It’s very much a case of deja vu if I glance at the technology pages in The Times or the Guardian. In fact I think they source a lot of their material from the tech blogosphere too.

Here at Syntagma Towers we only buy the print version of The Daily Mail because it loses a lot of its visual value online. It’s more of a magazine these days, so you need to have it in your hands for maximum impact.

I read the American press online, which means The New York Times and Wall Street Journal. It’s so much simpler than buying late print versions flown over.

I also consume the British broadsheets in pixel form. Unmissable commentary in large blocks of text does not require a paper version in an age of big screen monitors.

The Telegraph is the first port of call, with its brilliant array of journalists : American Janet Daley (who, annoyingly, is rarely wrong about anything) ; International Business Editor, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, whose commentary on the credit crunch is required reading — oh, and I knew some of his relatives in Oxford. Charles Moore can be relied upon to throw fresh light on any subject, and Jeff Randall is a one-stop-shop for untangling what’s going on in the business and political firmaments. Add Matthew d’Ancona’s take on politics and the paper really is de rigueur for anyone interested in the world we think we live in. Not forgetting Simon Heffer, of course. That’s quite a galaxy of stars.

The Times (London) ditto. Anatole Kaletsky’s macroeconomic pieces are perfectly read online, as are Matthew Parris’s musings on politics and everything that moves.

So, a newspaper nut like me only reads one paper in its native print version. What does that say about the future of print?

Keep the aspidistra flying folks.

Face it, we’ve all come under the cosh in the blogosphere at some time or other. It’s a bit tedious, isn’t it? DoshBlogging is a much better option — and it pays better too.

The Times (London) has a cluster of pieces today under the heading, Blogging for Dosh – the print version is much more comprehensive, so buy a copy if you can.

Apart from the now-mandatory two or three paragraphs on Darren Rowse, Mr Problogger, it looks at other moneymaking phenomena online, such as Perez Hilton, Julie Powell and Clotilde Dusoulier.

Tom Whitwell, whose blog, musicthing.co.uk, makes a bob or two, gives us “Ten ways to get rich blogging”. The best one for me is, “Keep your costs down”. He cites Perez Hilton, whose office is a coffee shop he inhabits all day for the price of a few lattes. Now that’s smart.

But read it yourself.

On Saturdays, I permit myself a small insult as reward for all the hard work during the week. Here’s today’s juicy snippet.

A U.S Congressman is reported to have said of another :

“Like a rotten mackerel in the moonlight, he shines and stinks.”

Thanks to Matthew Parris in today’s Times (London) for that great one-liner.

The question then arises, who does that remind you of over here in Britain? Answers on a postcard, please, to : 10 Downing Street, London, SW1.