Recently announced on the Zondervan web site:
Zondervan will serve as the preferred distributor of the Reader Digital Book by Sony to the Christian-retail market. Zondervan will sell both individual Reader Digital Books to retailers and will also offer special pricing of Zondervan content for the Reader. A select number of digital titles will be available, with more being introduced in the months ahead. An interactive point-of-purchase demonstration fixture for the Sony Reader is also available for Christian-retail stores through Zondervan.
“Zondervan is committed both to meeting our consumers’ desire for quality Christian content in a digital format and also equipping our CBA retail partners to succeed in the fast-growing digital world,” said Moe Girkins, Zondervan president and CEO. “Our relationship with Sony is an important step in achieving both of these goals and we are excited to offer our CBA partners the unique ability to sell not only the digital content but also the device to access the content, which we view very much as a competitive advantage for them.” Introduced in 2006, The Reader Digital Book by Sony was the industry’s first product of its kind. The second edition of the product was released in 2007, featuring expanded capabilities and features. A recent firmware upgrade gave Reader users compatibility with EPUB (a format poised to become the industry standard), Adobe Digital Editions, and the capability to reflow standard text-based Portable Document Format (PDF) eBooks for improved flexibility and readability, among other features.
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Last July at ICRS Zondervan unveiled their new Symtio product. With both Symtio and now the Sony partnership, it's clear Zondervan wants to stay at the forefront of the digital age of reading.
4 comments:
Sue Brower showed me hers at the ACFW conference and it's pretty cool. But such toys will have to wait in my world. Maybe when I make that first book contract!
How does it compare with Kindle? Readability? Price? Anyone know?
Very interesting. I'm still not sold on the whole e-reader solution (at $300-$500 each they are still way too expensive) but it is cool to see how publishers are pushing the edges of technology.
I imagine in a few more years, once the readers get down in price (probably between $50-$150 for a good quality reader) and if the price of books becomes comparable to what one finds on I-tunes this could take off.
Though it would make it impossible to just pass a copy of the book along unless there's a directed marketing effort to allow people to do so. (i.e. a code at the end of the electronic book file)
I saw my first Kindle this past weekend. Pretty slick, I've got to say. I'd like to see a Sony Reader, too. And I'm with Karen, wanting to see a comparison down the list between the two. (I'm sure such comparisons are already out there, I just haven't searched yet. We bloggees like all that work to be done by the bloggers we visit. :-) )
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