SONY’S invention of the Walkman in 1979 forever changed the way we listen to music. Now, almost 30 years on, the electronics company is attempting to change the way we read with a device that will display books downloaded from the internet.

Packing the holiday reading may soon be no more complicated than clicking on a title, downloading it to a flash memory chip and slotting it into the side of an iPod-style device known as the Sony Reader.

Sony has signed agreements with large publishers, including HarperCollins and Random House, to offer customers digital versions of thousands of popular titles such as The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown.

The Sony Reader, which will be introduced in America early this year and could come to Britain by next year, is expected to sell for about £200.

It is the size of a DVD box and can store 100 books. Pages are read on a monochrome screen and the device, which weighs 252g (9oz), uses battery power only when turning the page. A full charge will last for about 20 novels of average size.

Tak Sugiyama, in charge of the Sony Reader project, said that previous attempts to create a market for electronic readers had failed because the technology had not been good enough to make the reading experience an acceptable alternative to the real thing, and the deals for providing content had been “woefully inadequate”. He said: “The project boiled down to whether we could make a device that offered the same emotional attachment as books.”

Since Sony’s most recent stab at an electronic reader two years ago, it has greatly improved the technology of electronic ink and has made each virtual page easier to read and quicker to “turn”. The device has no internal illumination, which means that it needs to be read in the same light as a normal book, and so does not strain the eyes.

It is also far more versatile at handling different types of file. It can read Jpeg picture files for comics and MP3 files for audio-books, and can view any document saved in the PDF format.

Victoria Barnsley, chief executive of HarperCollins UK, said: “This could be a big market and provide opportunities for publishers. Sony has got the product right this time.”

Richard Sarnoff, head of the corporate development group at Random House in the US, said that it would take a while for the Reader to appeal to a mass audience, and early customers were likely to be gadget enthusiasts.

There remains the issue of security. Publishers have seen what happened with file-sharing in the music industry and are working with Sony to assess the risks.

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