Has Sony lost the e-book battle against Amazon?

[Alisa]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

You are saying the hardware costs for a 505 is too high and yet you paid MORE for a Kindle. Makes no sense.

No. I'm saying the cost to manufacture the device is high and Sony is charging a rock-bottom price. The margin is low and the price for ebook devices in general is still high enough to make it difficult to make that up in volume. I'm concerned it may be hard for them to keep this part of their business going if they do get away from selling content. Of course I doubt the Connect store is making them much money anyway. If this forum is any indication, many PRS owners never buy from them.

[kovidgoyal]

Originally Posted by HarryT

The charge is for the delivery, not the content. Data traffic over Sprint costs real money - someone has to pay for it.

Umm you're saying that the cost of delivering a few hundred pages of text over sprint is $10 a month? And if that were indeed the case, Amazon could easily have made the files available on a web server or via a desktop client.

[Nate the great]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

Umm you're saying that the cost of delivering a few hundred pages of text over sprint is $10 a month? And if that were indeed the case, Amazon could easily have made the files available on a web server or via a desktop client.

Where do you get the $10? Delivery is $.10.

[Alisa]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

Umm you're saying that the cost of delivering a few hundred pages of text over sprint is $10 a month? And if that were indeed the case, Amazon could easily have made the files available on a web server or via a desktop client.

I'm assuming you're talking about periodicals and blogs? I always figured most of the cost for that was providing them to you without ads. After all, content that's "free" on a website isn't quite free. You're renting a bit of your attention to the owners for them to resell to advertisers. Personally, I'd like the option to get them for free (or for a small delivery charge) with the ads.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Alisa

No. I'm saying the cost to manufacture the device is high and Sony is charging a rock-bottom price. The margin is low and the price for ebook devices in general is still high enough to make it difficult to make that up in volume. I'm concerned it may be hard for them to keep this part of their business going if they do get away from selling content. Of course I doubt the Connect store is making them much money anyway. If this forum is any indication, many PRS owners never buy from them.

I'm not sure that the 505 is being sold at a rock bottom price. Remember, the Kindle has extra hardware built-in that the 505 does not have and that makes the Kindle more expensive. The Kindle has a keyboard, the LCD thingy (not sure what it is called), and the EVDO hardware. All that is not on the 505. So the 505 should cost less.

What I am hoping in the long run is that the consumer who purchases a reader (no matter the brand) is the winner.

[kovidgoyal]

Originally Posted by Nate the great

Where do you get the $10? Delivery is $.10.

The cost of subscription to periodical content.

[kovidgoyal]

Originally Posted by Alisa

I'm assuming you're talking about periodicals and blogs? I always figured most of the cost for that was providing them to you without ads. After all, content that's "free" on a website isn't quite free. You're renting a bit of your attention to the owners for them to resell to advertisers. Personally, I'd like the option to get them for free (or for a small delivery charge) with the ads.

Yeah, there's no reason why Amazon couldn't have left the ads in. I seriously doubt the publishers of the content will make as much money from subscription fees (especially since Amazon will be taking their cut) as they would from their advertisers.

[madmaxmedia]

Originally Posted by rhadin

Sony, however, is not tied to the Sony Connect store and when determining availability, you should count alll the books available at all the stores that sell content readable on the Sony.

I don't like making gross analogies, but from a marketing and customer perspective I think it is apt to compare the Kindle to the iPod.

Yes, there are lots of sources of content for the Sony Reader. But everyone already 'knows' Amazon, so the limitation of only being able to purchase content at Amazon.com is insignificant for the general consumer. It actually removes some of the headache about worrying about formats, DRM, etc. You get an Amazon Kindle, you go to Amazon.com (the world's most popular book store) to look for books. You don't have to go to some specific ebook store, you search for what you want and whatever formats are available will be listed for you- whether it's hardback, paperback, used, or Kindle eBook. Or you buy straight from your Kindle, that's a great option too.

I'm not saying the Kindle is the best reader, but they did a good job thinking through the overall user experience IMO. Regardless of who wins out in the long run, someone had to put together a product like the Kindle before ebooks were to ever break into the mainstream (which still remains to be seen.)

[slayda]

Both Sony & Kindle introduced formats for their content that currently can not be read by other devices. It's true that you can find content that can be read by either the Sony or the Kindle, but since I don't have a Kindle it doesn't matter how many books Amazon has for sell in their proprietary format (same for Sony). By trying to "corner the market" they have both, IMO, cut both their own throats and crippled their customers. In that respect, they are IMHO both losers, in that they have lost a vast number of customers by greedily trying to capture a semi-monopoly in the ebook market.

Eventually one may win. But as I said before I hope they don't and that they eventually open their readers up to more general, non-proprietary formats and thereby to more potential customers. That way we, the customers/readers, win more.

[Falbe Publishing]

I think that the Kindle has come on so strong because:

1. Amazon promotes it. Kindle is always on the home page of a amazon.com where millions of people go. How many people have a reason to go to Sony's homepage, where you will note the ebook reader is not promoted.

2. Amazon has a lot of content and a huge customer base that can be emailed promotions about the Kindle.

3. The Kindle got HUGE media coverage at its debut last year during the holidays. Has anyone outside a tech blog covered the Sony reader?

I like my Sony 505 a great deal. I think that it is a competitive product, but Amazon has been outclassing it on promotion. I hope both products continue to exist and compete. I don't want to see one company gain a permanent lock on access to ebooks.

[vivaldirules]

Originally Posted by rhadin

When it is said that there are 145,000 titles available for the Kindle but only 45,000 for the Sony, the Sony numbers exclude, for example, those titles that Sony doesn't carry but Fictionwise, Project Gutenberg, Manybooks, etc., do carry that are easily downloaded to and read on the Sony. I would expect Amazon whose primary business is bookselling to stock more titles than Sony whose primary business is electronics, but overall availability is what counts when discussing content, not availability from a single source.

Books that are available at Fictionwise and Manybooks are in Mobipocket format which can be read directly on the Kindle. Aside from what's available at the Sony and Amazon sites, I think that the number of ebooks available for the Kindle and the Sony Readers are roughly equivalent. That means that if the 145,000 and 45,000 figures are correct for those two sites, then we Sony owners have significantly fewer titles available to us.

[carld]

Originally Posted by rhadin

The real content question is not Amazon bookstore vs. Sony Connect but rather the number of books available for purchase (or free) to be read on the Kindle vs those available for the Sony regardless of the seller.

I disagree, I think store content is key. When comparing content for the two devices what are most people going to compare (when they compare at all)? They'll compare the number of books available in each device's store. They will see Amazon at +100K over Sony, and that's as far as they'll go.

IMHO, people, excepting knowledgeable folks like we have on these forums, just don't care that Mobipocket and Fictionwise have lots of books too. Also, I don't think either of these stores carries Sony specific format books do they?

[MerLock]

Originally Posted by carld

Content is king. Sony would need to at least double the number of titles they're adding to their online store each month to have a hope of beating Amazon. They'd also need to lower prices. I don't see either of those things happening really.

Doesn't the Sony reader now support epub.? Even though the format isn't available on the Sony Connect store, you might be able to find more content elsewhere for the device.

Sony's decision to open up the reader to outside formats makes it a winner in my book because it really is about content and not being locked into a format that can only be used on a single device.

But amazon did do a great job in promoting the Kindle. From what I hear, a lot of people of aware of the Kindle but not the Sony Reader. And the ease of use of just going to amazon.com to get lots of content where Sony seems to rely on other e-stores, websites for content.

[TheLongshot]

Personally, I could care less about what is available on both of their sites. I almost exclusivlely buy from Fictionwise for my content.

As for the two products, the Sony Reader is cheaper and more attractive. Since I don't care about the stores and the method of delivery, Sony wins hands down for me.

Jason

[carld]

Originally Posted by MerLock

Doesn't the Sony reader now support epub.? Even though the format isn't available on the Sony Connect store, you might be able to find more content elsewhere for the device.

Sony's decision to open up the reader to outside formats makes it a winner in my book because it really is about content and not being locked into a format that can only be used on a single device.

It does, as mentioned by other posters above. But ePub is a young format and I don't think there's much, if any, content that available only as ePub (I could be wrong about that). Also, any non-DRM ePub files can be converted to the Kindle. I don't, at the moment, see ePub being an advantage for Sony, that may well change in time.