Borders announced yesterday that it has partnered with Sony to launch a new online store offering over twenty-five thousand e-books available for download onto the Sony Reader. The site is accessible only to Borders customers who purchase the device from one of the bookseller’s brick-and-mortar stores. (The bookseller’s main e-commerce site is maintained within Amazon, which recently released its own digital reader, Kindle, in direct competition with the Sony Reader.) Borders customers will receive a promotion code and a customized edition of eBook Library software necessary to access the site.
The new e-book store is the most recent collaboration between Sony and Borders, which last year agreed to sell the Reader in more than five hundred of its outlets nationwide.
Kevin Ertell, Borders vice president of e-business, said that since the bookseller began stocking the Reader, "we are seeing sales increase chain-wide," Publishers Weekly reported. "Borders is embracing this technology which we firmly believe will emerge over time as important to our business."
