Sorry you ran into this, in a more rational world this wouldn't have happened because devices like your Sony reader would be required to have easily user replaceable batteries.
The EU for example now requires that manufactures of cell phones use a standard micro-usb charger, so folks can just re-use the charger from their previous phone.
This is all well and good, but if these folks were really sincere about reducing electronic waste they would
require companies like Sony, and Amazon, and Apple to design these portable devices to use standardized plug in replaceable battery packs.
The manufactures would scream bloody murder about how expensive it would be to physically do this, but I'm an engineer, and trust me this is utter and complete B.S.
A series of only four or five small flatpack type L-Ion battery packs could be standardized that would plug into your device like a kind of over-sized SD card, and this would easily meet the needs of 95% of these devices.
Better standardizing the batteries would make them more of a commodity item, actually saving the manufactures more than the small cost of the plug in socket and mechanical changes needed to use them. So cost not the issue, there would actually be a small net savings.
The real issue is that companies like Apple, Amazon, and now Sony, have made TRILLIONS by intentionally marketing disposable I-Trash products that may be an environmentally disaster, but are an economic goldmine for them.
Sorry for the off topic RANT
but, all this silliness DOES matter, because when you have to toss out an otherwise perfectly usable device like this because the battery has died, we now have to consider not only the fact that it becomes garbage polluting a land fill somewhere, but also the thousands of cubic meters of CO2 that went into producing it.