| | By John Daly in Germany @ Thursday, March 19, 2009 3:50 PM
| |
| | Sony scored a nice goal for its newest ebook readers. Users can now head over to Sony's Ebook store, click on a front-page link and download any free title from half a million titles in the public domain. The public-domain books are made available by Google and also include editions in various languages, such as German, Spanish, Italian and French. The move will allow Sony to offer 600,000 books in total to anyone owning a Sony PRS-505 or PRS-700 ebook reader. Amazon can offer its customers only something over 230,000 digitalised books.
'We have focused our efforts on offering an open platform and making it easy to find as much content as possible - from our store or others - whether that content is purchased, borrowed or free,' blathered Steve Haber, president of Sony's ebook unit. 'Working with Google, we can offer book lovers another avenue for free books while still providing a seamless experience from our store.'
Sony is selling its readers through various channels worldwide. Amazon recently unveiled the successor to Kindle, aptly named Kindle 2. However, the device is currently only sold in the US, where it is rather popular despite its high price tag of $359. Amazon did launch in a spot of both with the gadgets synthesised voice output, which reads out texts aloud. Fearing litigation from the Author's Guild of America, Amazon decided end of February to allow rightsholders to decide if they want the digital versions of their works read out aloud, or not. The AGA feared the function would quench sales of audiobooks. X
| |
| |  Add Comment | |
| | | |