Almost three years ago, Sony unveiled the first version of its electronic book reader, dubbed, excitingly enough, the Reader. As I predicted at the time (Short-tailed Sony reader needs a much longer one), the device bombed because it was a product in search of a need.
The Reader didn’t offer enough (if any) advantages over reading books the old-fashioned way. You had to go on your computer, buy the books online, download them, link the Reader to your computer and fill it up. Sony had a tiny selection of ebooks for sale priced at about the same level as print books. And the selection was mainly best-sellers. There was no connection to the Internet or blogs or harder-to-find books. There was no search, no online access, no keyboard at all. The only “advantage” was that you could carry a book shelf’s worth of books around. So what.
Amazon’s Kindle, released a year later, got it right, by contrast. The addition of wireless made buying ebooks quick and easy, even on the go. Vastly more ebooks were for sale at low prices that could not be beat. And the ebookstore was open to new additions, uploaded by anyone who wanted to engage, allowing for a blossoming of free or 99 cent ebooks of out-of-copyright classics. The Kindle store included magazines, newspapers and offline-readable blogs. The device bundled a free wireless Internet connection for accessing a wide array of other textual online resources. And, despite what some cranky luddites say, the Kindle’s been a huge success that’s caught the attention of a lot of other companies that now want to play in the ebook market.
Today, hopefully not too late to have a major influence on the evolving ebook ecosystem, Sony has finally come up with a much better reader and a host of innovative features (tip o’ the cap for the news and generally for great ebook coverage to the Teleread blog). The new “Reader Daily Edition” has a 7″ electronic ink, touch-sensitive screen and a wireless connection that works over AT&T’s cell phone network. That’s matching or exceeding some of Kindle’s best features but I’m more excited about the innovations. You’ll be able to use your Sony Reader to borrow ebooks from thousands of libraries like the New York Public Library. You’ll be able to buy ebooks from major independent vendors like Powells.com. And, of course, as I wished for 3 years ago, you can read the million or so out-of-copyright (and permissioned) books Google has scanned into its vast databases.
Sony is also stepping away somewhat from locking content to its line of devices. Sure, Sony’s ebooks will still be locked down with proprietary digital rights management, or DRM, software but at least Sony has switched to Adobe’s somewhat (arguably) more broadly used DRM instead of keeping its own. That means that ebooks bought for the Sony Reader will — we hope — be readable on any other program or device that also licenses the Adobe software. There’s been some confusion, fostered by a misleading New York Times story, that the Sony is selling “open” or unrestricted books. That’s not the case but this is still a big step in the right direction. If Sony got out of the ebook business altogether, other Adobe-licensed reader devices could still access the ebooks (again — we think/hope).
For a while it seemed like Sony was becoming irrelevent in the ebook market, what with the rapid advances from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Google, Apple iPhone app store participants and so on. Now Sony has shown it’s still in the hunt. Of course, we’ll have to wait and hear from users and reviewers whether all these features work as advertised and if there are any hidden gotchas (the library feature says you must have a card from each particular library, it sounds like). But for now, it’s a bright, shiny day for ebook fans. We can only wait to see what moves Amazon and Barnes & Noble make to react.
Prior coverage:
Yes, Virginia, the Barnes & Noble ebookstore is a Good Thing (7/22/2009)
Amazon Kindle competitor EReader slashes ebook prices (7/5/2009)
Apple gives stage to overpriced ebook developer Scrollmotion (6/9/2009)
Sony ereader seeking wide open wireless (10/3/2008)
Apple will not slay Amazon’s Kindle, not even close (8/20/2008)
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