For a festival devoted to the joys of the printed word, a sponsorship deal with a consumer electronic giant seems particularly unlikely. But as the literary great and good descend on Hay, they will be doing so under the banner of the Sony Reader - the ebook reader which, alongside Amazon's Kindle, is touted as the answer to book publishing in a digital age.
Publishing executives are watching developments carefully - sales of ebooks are growing fast, albeit from a small base. "I don't think we are approaching a tipping point quite yet," says Gail Rebuck, the chairman and chief executive of Random House. "If you look at ebook sales, they're less than 1% of turnover." There is, however, long-term potential: "Can I conceive of a world where digital reading takes up 20% or 25% of people's available reading time? Yes I can. Could it be as much as 50%? I don't know."
Featured later in the article is Roger Fidler, program director for digital publishing at the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute:
The assumption is that the e-reader represents a fourth platform. It is not just another mobile device," says Roger Fidler, programme director for digital publishing at the Reynolds Journalism Institute (RJI) in Missouri. In an era when newspapers have to look at multiple platforms, e-readers are "part of the solution".
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