A new kind of literature not just a new e-reader?

I just read this article :

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/rorycellanjones/2010/01/is_publishing_about_to_have_an.html

(thanks @jamesclay) and struck by a thought.

The reason MP3 took off is because it allowed you to listen to music anywhere (OK, and probably being able to get content 'free' had something to do with it too), even more flexibly than portable Cd/tape players had and with your own choice of music with you rather than the radio - and as the article points out, books are already portable so the demand isn't the same.

What struck me in that is music is usually small chunks of songs, so we want lots of it with us to fill the time and to have variety to fit our mood. We don't do that with books. Most people will have one or 2 books on the go at any one time and they tend to be long enough to fill a chunk of time on their own.

But what if 'books' were small bite sized things instead and if we could then carry thousands of them with us, put then on shuffle or pick a category to suite out mood etc? Basically, which if e-readers are not suitable for books at all but need a new sort of literature to drive the demand for them?

It's not unusual for technology to drive changes in literature formats or at least to adapt hand in hand. Small brochures, comics, short novels etc all lent themselves to the particular media and form factor available with the technology.

Or Perhaps the killer thing a really good e-reader could have over a book though is dynamic content. Illustrations in novels that are animated, books that know which word you're reading by eye tracking and provide additional audio ambiance or haptic feedback - perhaps a horror novel with dramatic music generated on the fly that times a dramatic strident chord to when you read just the right phrase...?

Or perhaps books need to be incredibly cheap to justify all that space to hold thousands of novels? Who would ever read that many novels in the lifetime of such a gadget anyhow?

Or perhaps the devices themselves need to be cheap enough to be practically disposable?

I suppose i have no idea what suitable new such literature would be like or even if people would want it, but without it, I'm strugling to see the real market for e-book readers besides appeal to the gadget lover.

However - a general purpose device that can access the net anywhere and just happens to also work as a good reader? Well maybe that would interest me. *cough* Apple *cough* and once a device is out there with a market place suitable for micro-payments for content on demand the 'new literature' could happen?

-- Posted from my phone