Sony Corporation announced yesterday the launch of the Sony Reader, a device for reading electronic books. The $350 Reader, which weighs nine ounces and is roughly the size of a trade paperback book, can hold approximately eighty digital books. The company plans to sell more than ten thousand titles from publishers Random House, HarperCollins, Penguin, Simon & Schuster, and the Hachette Book Group on its online CONNECT Store.
The Reader is now for sale at the Sony Web site and will be available in Borders and SonyStyle stores in late October. In addition to books, the device, which can only be used with the Windows XP operating system, will allow users to view Adobe PDF documents, Microsoft Word documents, MP3 music files, and Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds of select blogs.
