I went shopping for an ebook the other day. It was the new James Bond book, Devil May Care, authored by Sebastian Faulks. I have been a fan of the Bond books for some time, but I really appreciate the original Ian Fleming titles, so this new book held particular interest for me.
I knew that it was a new release and a heavily marketed title, so I jumped at the chance that there may actually be a Kindle or Sony version available. I have both the Sony PRS-505 and Kindle, so I checked both Amazon and Sony's eBook Store. Just as a note of reference, I did not use the Kindle's Whispernet connection to check for availability, I just used standard web browsing.
I found the title easily in the Kindle bookstore and could not find it on Sony. I had hoped to find it on the Sony as I prefer the form factor and reading experience over the Kindle, so I decided to keep hunting. After a few more searches, however, I was able to find the title available on the Sony (the publisher was listed as Random House, not Doubleday, and a keyword search for "James Bond" did not return this book, so I went back to Amazon and grabbed the title and found it only by a title search). The list price on Kindle was $9.99 and the price for the Sony was $12.56.
After a few minutes, I had purchased the title through Sony and was downloading it to my PRS-505. The lesson here is that I spent an additional 15 minutes tracking down the title after I had already found it on Amazon and paid a 25% premium to have the same reflowable text on my Sony device rather than Kindle.
