DuraBooks - Waterproof books from Melcher Media

Charles Melcher last month received a patent for his method of creating waterproof books.

Now you can read in the tub without worrying about a catastophic event - and I've had many.

The idea came to him five years ago when he was reading an article in the New York Times about people who like to bathe as opposed to showering.

It occurred to him that the type of person the Times described matched perfectly the demographic profile of avid book buyers.

And so was born his quest, now bearing serious fruit, what with a very nice article in yesterday's Financial Times and I'm sure many other mentions.

Amazon's got his entire line of WetWare, as it were.

Melcher envisions his next market to be beach blanket readers; to this end, he's already planning his waterproof spring offering: "The Beach Reader," a collection of literary fiction.