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Originally Posted by MerLock
I guess the reason they do not sell epub books and probably will not is because to me, it appears Sony is a hardware company and not a book retailer. Sony is interested in pushing the reader and has opened it up to a wide variety of formats so that people can get content elsewhere. But I do hope they do realize there is a market for ebooks and consider selling books in epub format and continue to increase the volume of their library. Hopefully, they'll also be able to do a better job in offering competitive prices since they currently seem to be lacking in that area.
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i agree that sony is primarily a hardware company, but recently they've been making great strides in increasing their content offer. the partnership with google is huge, and even before that the offer in their bookstore has been increasing at a much higher rate than previously in
this thread some members have been tracking the increase in content available through the sony store and recently it has increased at a much higher rate than previously. so that seems to indicate that they want to concentrate on both aspects, even while they are opening their devices to content from other sources (which is a very good move on their part). it would be nice if they could lower prices as well but i suspect that does not depend exclusively on sony (they have to work with publishers as well on that).
Quote:
Originally Posted by Icarusbop
Agreed, the displays are currently very expensive, but the company have got a few years of R&D ( and all the other add-ons,like power, materials, equipment, wages, 5 layers of insurance etc.) to pay for with their current income - the now developed E-ink display, before they can start realistically reducing the price.
With a research venture like the one they have undertaken, companies can easily be £10,000,000 in debt before they even get a marketable product -once they have the product, this debt needs to be paid before the prices will start coming down.
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that is a good point, but don't you think they could more easily earn back their investment if they lowered the price of the unit and sold more of them ? it seems to me that higher sales, even if their profit margin is somewhat lower on each individual sale, would help them to catch up on their investment much more than selling fewer devices even at a higher markup, particularly if they also hope to earn money on content (as it seems they do). more devices sold means more readers to buy books, as well.