Okay, so my sequence of events was a bit off (thanks, Steve), and that knocks my theory a bit of kilter.
But in the case of e-Readers, you could make a case that there wasn't all that big a pool of books available to begin with (you could also make a case that there's still not
) since most folks (even now) don't know about PG, et. al., so they couldn't really follow the iPod/iTunes path too faithfully anyway.
But what you've said makes me think even more that they should make a point of playing up the texts available elsewhere, to avoid tying the Reader too closely to the ConnStore in people's minds.
Getting folks used to the idea of e-reading is what will get them buying books, and a good way to do that is to point out that they can already do so without DRM, and a lot of good stuff is available free, and oh, by the way, there's this Sony store too.