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More to (e-)read

For all the talk about electronic books, the market for e-book readers still seems fairly limited, so it’s not surprising to hear that Sony has announced that its digital reader will now be able to read e-books published using the .epub format.

Until now, the Sony Reader could only read books available from the Sony e-book store, PDF documents, and DRM-free text. But the company plans to provide a software update to the Reader so the device can display .epub books, an open format being adopted by several large publishers (akin to how MP3 files have become the open-format standard in music). That means more choice for users, who will now be able to buy e-books from stores other than Sony’s (such as Amazon, for example, which has a larger selection of e-book titles than Sony’s e-book store).

CNet.com reports:

The Sony Reader Digital Book is the first e-book reading device to support the .epub format, which is the XML-based standard format proposed by the International Digital Publishing Forum. It allows publishers to convert books to different formats, protect the copy using DRM (digital rights management) and has the ability to resize PDF e-books and other text to better fit the reader’s screen size.

Publishers including Harper Collins, Random House, Simon & Schuster, and Penguin are offering texts in the .epub format.

[...]

“This upgrade opens the door to a whole host of paid and free content from third-party eBook stores, Web sites, and even public libraries,” Steve Haber, senior vice-president of consumer product marketing for Sony Electronics, said in a statement.

The announcement is the latest move in a standards war over e-book formats pitting Sony against Amazon. Amazon’s Kindle e-book reader and e-books it sells support the proprietary .azw format. Amazon also acquired Mobipocket, which offers a format for texts read on PDAs and BlackBerrys, and its Kindle can read DRM-free .mobi files.

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