Sony announces first million-title ebookshop

Sony now has the world's largest online ebookshop - for this week at least.

The company has just announced that it will be allowing users of its Sony Reader devices to download over a million free titles from its ebookstore.

The titles come courtesy of Google, which is in the process of digitising as much of the world's supply of printed material as possible.

Millions of books, nothing to read?

The deal will allow Sony to offer over a million copyright-free volumes from its US online bookstore, for download to users' computers and subsequent upload to their Reader PRS-505 or PRS-700 devices.

The titles will be available only to users based in the USA, and follows hot on the heels of last week's announcement by Barnes & Noble here that its online library, for use with a dedicated iPhone app, contains over 700,000 titles, including half a million from Google Books.

Amazon currently offers 'just' 300,000 books at its Kindle store, although these include most of the current best-sellers, as well as some cheap and free volumes. Amazon also sells digital subscriptions to magazines, newspapers and blogs, for wireless delivery over 3G. Amazon is expected to be launching Kindle in the UK very shortly.

Via ZDNet.