TeleRead.org is reporting (http://www.teleread.org/blog/?p=4605) that Sony will be selling it's new e-Reader device at about 200 Borders bookstores in the U.S. The stores seem almost ubiquitious through many areas, and it looks like an ideal way to work into a strong potential market. Every retail push of this sort is a win for not just Sony, but for e-book readers in general. And a convenient purchase location is likely to influence many of the e-book reader fans that are having trouble deciding between models.

Full details are available in the Sony press release (http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/060403/lam098a.html?.v=1).

Related reference: E-ink reader comparison matrix (http://www.mobileread.com/eink/).

I haven't found this press release at sony's site ((

Can someone please give the direct link?

Takir, just follow the Yahoo link - it's the official press release.

I think this is a great move by Sony. Let's go and make the e-book mainstream!

Hi,

Finally some good news on the eink reader front. I barely wait to see the reader in person. I have a Sony store close to my house, but lots of Borders stores that I visit quite often, so somewhere it should be available when released. Now with some good, fast and reliable conversion tools for common format files and it may get popular enough to catch on. Then it is possible we will see an explosion of digital books. Personally, I still believe that first will come the digitized ebooks from Google or Amazon or some other online company and then a popular reader, but hopefully I am wrong and the digital book revolution will start sooner.

Liviu

I read the press release and I must say that I am not impressed. Yes, it's positive that Sony plans to offer the Sony Reader in about half of all Borders stores nationwide. And yes, it's positive that Borders will offer prepaid cards to be used for buying e-books at the Sony CONNECT store.

Yet the original problem remains: the price of the e-book is too high to seriously compete with paperbooks. I am afraid that people from the street will glimpse at the Sony Reader, admire its fantastic screen, only to finish their shopping with a good old $8.99 paper book. As long as there isn't a compelling (financial) incentive for people less technology-minded than us, they won't switch. And a nice gadget demonstrated at a book store won't be enough to make the difference.

Over at teleread, I was hoping that it will be more like ...

Consider this: By going retail, what if users start seeing “ePaperbacks” appearing as a plastic shrink box with a small booklet containing the Book summary, Author’s BIO and a MS (or SD) card? And as part of launch promotion, its priced slightly lower than normal paperbacks.

And how about having normal paperbacks come with a low-capacity MS card?

Maybe these MS card can be readonly cards or something?
----

Unless Sony can pull off a iPod pony trick on this one and convince the major publishers to adopt a $0.99 per book ... ok, maybe not that cheap, but say $4.99 per book? Bring your own MS stick and purchase your book for $4.99 or something. Or just buy one MS stick from borders if you forget to bring one. How about if Sony sold the books on 128mb or 64mb MS sticks?

I agree that their prices are too high. The convenience just isn't worth the loss of fair-use (lending out your book, for one) and ability to sell (or donate) your books when you're done reading them.

Regardless of what you think of Sony, I think having the Sony Reader in a brick & mortar bookstore chain like Borders will be good news for e-books, but more importantly, E-Ink technology. Once readers see first-hand how good the E-Ink displays are, they'll want one for the readability and convenience. The pricing of titles in Sony's e-book ecosystem will be tough to swallow for all but the die-hard e-book enthusiasts with money to burn.

This could be good news for E-Ink as well as iRex and their distribution & content partners: Free advertising for the technology while learning from Sony. Based on iRex's relationships and testing with large newspapers combined with The New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/02/business/02ednote.html?8dpc) starting to embrace new technology and the web, I'm hopeful that subscription models will help subsidize the hardware costs of the iRex Iliad. I also think this photo (http://www.mobileread.com/upload/news/2005-12/iliad.jpg) of the Iliad displaying the NYT is not a coincidence. The New York Times Company (http://www.nytco.com/company.html) has quite an extensive network including TV & radio stations and 35 websites in addition to publishing The New York Times, The International Herald Tribune, The Boston Globe and 15 other daily newspapers. Using the iRex Iliad's wireless capabilities, it isn't too hard to imagine a personalized daily newspaper getting delivered automatically to your device every morning.

Sony might be first out of the gate in "E-Reading 2.0", but they won't have first-mover advantage when they haven't learned from their past mistakes which include overly restrictive DRM, BBeB which will be yet another failed proprietary format (http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=technologyNews&storyID=2006-03-30T151058Z_01_N30216728_RTRIDST_0_TECH-UNIVERSALMEDIADISC-DC.XML&archived=False), and high prices.

Now found this prees-release it at Sony's site ))
http://news.sel.sony.com/pressrelease/6594

E-books prices are not coming down any time soon. (Not Sony's fault, as it's the publishers who set the prices.) At least they're trying to bring e-reading to the masses. People are focusing too much on the negative aspects. What about portability and convenience or downloading out-of-print or unavailable titles? These might all be compelling reasons for buying a reader. Time will tell.

E-books prices are not coming down any time soon. (Not Sony's fault, as it's the publishers who set the prices.) At least they're trying to bring e-reading to the masses. People are focusing too much on the negative aspects. What about portability and convenience or downloading out-of-print or unavailable titles? These might all be compelling reasons for buying a reader. Time will tell.

Most agreed! I think out-of-print sales could really benefit from ebook technology since there is no store house or logistic of reprinting to mess with. The challenge I guess is that some of the out-of-print books may not have digital copies to start with. Maybe Google could be on to something with the digitization of all those books. They could then sell the service to content owners to repackage the digital copies as ebooks and have a ebook warehouse where users could search, buy and download.

It's not Sony's fault, but they could use its branding muscle to get a sell-in. Kinda like what Apple did to those music distro channels right? But the tricky part would be for Sony to come up with a magic number that both the ebook distros/publishers would bite and consumers would bite. Time to spin the Magic-8 ball. ;)

My plan is to scan and OCR all my books...I got a high-speed scanner just for that purpose. It is really too bad companies are (generally) charging so much for ebooks, especially when it is cheaper for them to do ebook sales.

I see a lot of assumptions going on here. Yes, many of us are focusing on the negative aspects here, but those are serious aspects that will be significant barriers to making a successfull market here. Are e-books are solution looking for a market or a market looking for a solution? I believe it is the former, hence my poor prospects for the future.

200 stores? Is that really impressive when that breaks down to an average of 4 per state? Will every state get a Borders with one of these? Will all the Borders in, say, New York state eat up my state's average of 4 stores? Heck, I can throw a stone from my house and hit 4 within a 20 minute's drive.

Once readers see first-hand how good the E-Ink displays are, they'll want one for the readability and convenience.

Maybe for a few, but I doubt it. I think most people will shirk from the price tag, even more people will just say "neat" and move on without considering buying one. Paper books are just as readable if not more so; the convenience factor pales when all someone is carring around is one paperback, which does not require batteries, works great in the sun, has instant random access, and can be turned in to their hole-in-the-wall bookstore for credit for more books.

I think out-of-print sales could really benefit from ebook technology since there is no store house or logistic of reprinting to mess with.

Those books went out of print for a reason - there was not enough perceived demand to make it worth paying the taxes on inventory required to keep a backlist in print. The ebook market is still too small to challenge this; notice what's happening in the iTunes world, or the Sony adverts we've see so far: blockbuster best sellers.

The cost of digitizing and proofreading titles old enough not to have an electronic manuscript are not insignificant for a major publisher, as well as examine or re-negotiating contracts, tracking sales and payment of royalties, and all the overhead the office operations incurr.

I'm trying to be optimistic, but I can't. If we were talking about a $100 device that came with 5 free books and a one year subscription to Time, I could see selling some units. All I can see right now is another Gemstar.

Barnes & Noble weighs in on the Sony Reader & Borders partnership.

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/business/technology/14262585.htm

Weee! 1st Post!


Anyway, I called up Sony customer service today (I was bored) and all they told me was that the reader is supposed to come out in May, looks like we're going to have to wait another month :(

BTW: DON'T ever shop at Borders!
http://www.calendarlive.com/books/cl-et-quick31.4mar31,0,105518.story?coll=cl-books-features


I know some people at Free Inquiry and I'm pissed, I tore up my card when I heard about this.