US readers of Esquire are soon to be exposed to the publishing industry's latest attempt at re-inventing itself: a magazine with a flashing cover.

The September issue of the magazine will have a tiny built-in battery, which will power a display on the cover that flashes the words 'the 21st Century Begins Now.'

It would appear that readers will not to be able to interact with the magazine, however, and after 90 days the battery will run out. "I hope it will be in the Smithsonian," David Granger, Esquire's editor in chief said of the cover in an interview with the New York Times.

Mr Granger said the idea for putting electronic components in a magazine was borne out of a frustration with the industry's lack of progress. "Magazine have basically looked the same for 150 years," he said.

Publishing experts dismissed the idea as a gimmick, however, saying that the experience would be "very poor" in comparison with using a well-designed website. They advised publishers to stick to areas where they had the edge on web content, such as using striking images and writing long-form articles.

The flashing cover was produced by Esquire in conjunction with E Ink, a Massachusetts company whose technology was used in the Kindle, the "e-reader" device made by Amazon. Esquire first had to hire an engineer in China who could build a battery small enough to be inserted in the cover.

The batteries and display case are manufactured in China, then shipped to Mexico, where they are inserted into each copy of the magazine by hand. The empowered magazines are then transported to the distributor in Kentucky via refrigerated truck - to preserve the life of the battery.

"We are trying to combine a 21st-century technology with a 19th-century manufacturing process," Mr Granger said. The new cover will only be inserted in 100,000 magazines, despite Esquire having a circulation circulation of 720,000. An ad on the inside front cover for Ford, the motor company, will also take advantage of the display.

Nick Thomas, a media analyst at Jupiter, said: "A lot of brands are redesigning their content to reflect the fact that people are consuming media in different formats, and generally, the goal is to make the user experience relevant to the strength of a particular format. I'm struggling to see how putting a battery in a magazine will work."

"There will always be a market for magazines that combine great images with long articles - both things that you can't really do well online."

Natmags, the British subsidiary of Esquire's US publisher, Hearst, would not say whether the British version would make use of the technology.

Esquire is not the first publisher to have experimented with e-books. In November, Amazon released the Kindle - a device the size of a paperback onto which the owner could download all manner of books for about $9.99. Sony released a similar device the previous year.

The market for digital books is estimated to be worth $15-25 million, but media analysts say it is still waiting for a manufacturer to produce a device so compelling that a majority of publishers decide to make their content available for it.

Books are among the first 'apps' - or applications - that can be downloaded to Apple's new iPhone, suggesting that publishers think the touchscreen device, a combined phone, media player and web browser, may provide a turning point in 'e-reading'.

The Dickens classics A Christmas Carol and A Tale Of Two Cities are among the books that can be downloaded to the iPhone for 59p.

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