Its kind of interesting to see the divergence of business models between the big three reader companies.

Amazon seems to rely mostly on Internet sales through their immensely popular Amazon.com website and they do quite a bit of advertising on TV and other media. They do sell through some retail stores, but as we know those stores have thousands of other items, and readers are just one more item placed on a shelf in hopes that it sells. Amazon's Kindle sales model seems to work as they are reportedly selling millions of them.

B&N is a Book store chain so their focus is on books. They seem to emphasize their Nooks in their retail stores and at their website and push them hard. They sell Nooks through some other retail stores as well. I don't know their sales figures, but I suspect the NOOKcolor is out selling the Sony Readers.

Sony makes thousands of products and they seem to not really emphasize their readers much at all. It is almost like they were using the Reader division as a tax write off! Sony's advertising is minimal and I suspect their philosophy of if we build it they will buy it is not producing a lot of sales. Again I have no data, but gut instinct tells me Sony is probably selling only a small fraction of the number of readers that Amazon or B&N do. Like the other two, Sony sells through other retail stores. But Sony seems to emphasize their website sells and let's face it, the Sony website is not as big a draw as Amazon's or B&N's. And even though Sony owns a chain of retail stores, these stores are few and far between and from what I'm reading even the Sony retail stores don't push their readers.