Sony e-book reader with E Ink display headed to Borders book stores

San Diego (CA) - At CES last January, officials from Sony told TG Daily that the company’s digital book reader device, based on E Ink’s thin, very-high-definition "electronic ink" display, would be available in the US this spring. This morning, Sony took the next step in delivering on that promise, announcing a marketing deal to sell its Sony Reader portable electronic book device through Borders book stores in the US, though Sony did not reveal many other details.

The Borders deal could give avid readers their first taste of electronic reading through E Ink’s astounding new electronic paper display (EPD) technology. Rather than using lighted diodes, or crystal alignments that bend the wavelengths of light shone through them (as in LCD), E Ink’s EPDs utilize microscopic capsules that are, quite literally, tiny balls painted entirely black or entirely white. These balls are suspended in liquid inside spheres, which are themselves microcapsules. When a negative electrical field is applied to the sphere, the white balls float to the surface and become legible, and the black balls descend to the bottom ; when a positive field is applied, their positions are reversed. As a result, the EPD display has very fine resolution - albeit monochrome - with superb clarity and very low power consumption.

Sony characterizes this power consumption in an unusual way, in terms of "page turns." Today, the company said its Sony Reader will sustain up to 7,500 page turns on a single battery charge. The accuracy of this statement lies in the fact that it takes more power to change the display than it does to sustain it ; since it’s not video, it doesn’t need refreshing like a CRT or LCD.

From a social perspective, the dilemma before Sony now is whether the Borders culture, which has heretofore been based on what bloggers call "dead trees," will accept the notion of reading books the way iPod listeners enjoy music. The Sony Reader is by no means a cute device ; it’s a slightly glorified frame for the far more intriguing E Ink page. But like tunes purchased for an iPod, "books" purchased for the Sony Reader will be trapped within Sony’s digital rights management system. In one sense, they belong to you ; in the legal sense, however, they belong to their publishers.

The Sony Reader device - at least, a prototype of one - using E Ink’s revolutionary new EPD display technology.  (Courtesy Sony) 

One of the key unanswered questions from Sony’s announcement today is the extent to which Borders - ostensibly a book store - will sell books for this device. What was announced was that customers would have the ability to purchase pre-paid cards through Borders, which entitles them to acquire e-books through Sony’s CONNECT service. Presently, books aren’t up for sale on Connect.com ; the major sales item there is music videos, followed by music tracks, for download and play on participating devices (read : not Apple). At some time in the future, we might expect Sony Reader books to be sold alongside tracks from DMC and Ghostface Killah. Whether the Borders customer will appreciate this, is certainly yet to be seen.

Equally up in the air is the practical issue of price and availability, which applies to both the Reader and the e-books themselves. Today’s announcement does not make clear which books will be made available, and from what publishers. Most importantly, perhaps, we don’t really know the price(s) of Sony Reader, although Joseph Wikert, the former publisher of Que, SAMS, and Wiley and Sons books, reports on his personal blog that he was told by Sony officials the Reader would be available in two models, one priced at $400, the other at $500. Sony was contacted by TG Daily for this report, and has not responded.