Quote:
Originally Posted by jbcohen
Stach makes an interesting point, although I will be happy for Sony owners to prove me wrong on this topic:
I like low cost books and free ones so I took a look at some of the classics and the prices associated with them. My guinea pig was Jules Vern's 20,000 leagues under the sea. Sony offered it for $2 and Amazon under cut the price at $0. I saw a lot of low cost books that I liked in my library for low cost, under $7 in Amazon and Sony did not seem to have a great selection under my limit.
Also Amazon offered a reader for $115, I have the Kindle Special Offers, and the best Sony was willing to do was $180 or the pocket edition. Amazon under cut Sony's price so I chose my poison.
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The Sony ebookstore is linked to Google Books. Therefore, any of the free books on Google are available directly in the Sony store. You just didn't search properly. To avoid cluttering their store, they group them in a separate search category called "Google Books". There appear to be at least 3 versions of "20,000 Leagues..." available for free. The cheapest one in the regular Sony store appears to be $0.95 and not $2 by the way. Besides, if you didn't want to use Google Books through the Sony ebookstore, then you could just as easily download that book for free directly from Google or from here on MR or numerous other options.
Sony's philosophy has always been to keep the MSRP high and offer numerous sales. Many people paid $109 - 129 for their Pocket Editions. I paid $129 for mine in February during the Valentine's Day sale. When the new X50 models came out they had an ereader trade-in program through New Year's. For the UK customers, they had a "get back the VAT" rebate. That is a common marketing strategy too. I bought my 505 by trading in my 500 for $100 credit years ago.