Tadamasa Kitsukawa 1 198x300

Sony is still in the game.  From an article about the London Book Fair in Publishing Perspectives:

[talking about the Kindle] the overriding message from the presentation by Tadamasa Kitsukawa, MD of the Sony Digital Reading Platform, was that the Sony Reader Store is different.

He’s right, too. “We don’t believe in walled gardens. We believe in an open format, the EPUB format, so that all our content can be read on future devices. It’s very important for our customers. We believe in giving people open access to our Reader store with different hardware from different manufacturers.”

The Sony Reader store has now gone live in the UK, supported by numerous publishers, among them Penguin, Quercus, Headline, Little, Brown and Canongate. Sony’s latest touch Reader is being sold in 19 countries and although Kitsukawa would not say how many titles were available, this was because “we are adding more everyday.” He added also: “We are not interested in self-publishing and we don’t think a single, dominant player is healthy for the anyone. In fact, we think a single, dominant player can jeopardize the whole industry.”

2 COMMENTS

  1. If they are so freakin’ “open”, why do they insist you install a proprietary application on your computer in order to be able to purchase from them (if you don’t have one of their wifi-enabled readers)? Really frustrating.

  2. “We don’t believe in walled gardens, and we believe in open formats, which is why we require you to use our proprietary software to buy your books, which will then be delivered in Adobe’s proprietary format.”

The TeleRead community values your civil and thoughtful comments. We use a cache, so expect a delay. Problems? E-mail newteleread@gmail.com.