Amazon’s Kindle ebook reading device has some serious competition. Sony, makers of the PlayStation and Vaio laptop computers, has launched an ebook reader that it has named Reader Daily Edition. The name may be a bit of a mouthful, but it’s unlikely that most people describe either product accurately, calling them, instead “Amazon’s ebook reader” or, now, “Sony’s ebook reader”.

Ebooks are gaining in popularity and many see huge commercial as well as cultural potential in the sector, so it’s no surprise that more companies are coming into the market. Google, for one, has been very busy tying up deals with libraries, publishers and authors around the world. So busy in fact that some sectors of the traditional book publishing industry have felt threatened enough to take them to court over their moves.

Microsoft, Yahoo and Amazon are among the companies that have expressed their objections to Google’s enthusiastic if not aggressive approach to the book publishing industry. But Google has insisted that its intentions are good and it has offered authors 70 per cent of sales proceeds, where authors used to get less than 10 per cent in the traditional system. Google has also said that it aims to publish many books that have long been out of print, giving readers the opportunity to access books that they otherwise may not be able to access.

And now, even before the row involving Google and the others has been fully resolved, along comes Sony with a device that is almost guaranteed to outsell the Kindle. Some estimates suggest that the Kindle has sold around 5,000 since its launch, a figure which must seem small compared with the kind of statistics Sony is used to, when it considers the sales of PlayStations and Vaios. Sony is pricing its ebook reader at around $399, or £250, and its design is already winning some acclaim.

Sony’s Daily Reader Edition has touch-screen functionality, allows you to read in portrait or landscape orientation, can store up to 1,000 books and has a facility to allow you to borrow library books for 21 days. As a result of these features, there is a growing perception that Sony’s new ebook reader may well be a huge success.

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Although the issue may be exercising the best legal minds around the world, Google’s move into book publishing may herald the dawn of a new future for established authors as well aspiring writers everywhere. The 70-30 split in favour of the author is what has given the search giant the advantage in terms of public opinion. What happens in the various legal tussles that Google faces around the world as a result of its move is less culturally significant than the general move towards electronic book publishing.

As many of us will know, because we’ve looked into it, because we were once aspiring authors, because everyone’s got a book in them, etc etc… anyway, as many of us will know, writing books very rarely makes money for the author of the work. This is because, in the old days, in traditional publishing, authors would receive a tiny percentage of the royalties – that’s what they call the profits, not sure why, not exactly princely sums for most writers. Sometimes, the percentage could be as low as 2 or 3 per cent, sometimes closer to 10 per cent, if you’re lucky.

The reasoning – some would say excuse – was that the one publishing company out of hundreds that you may have approached which finally decided to take a look at your manuscript and deemed it fit to publish had a small army of staff to pay and all sorts of marketing and distribution costs to consider. So, even though you and your potentially best-selling book is the reason for the existence of their global operation, you were promised next to nothing.

Organisations such as the Author’s Guild have been lobbying publishers for decades to try and get a better deal for authors, but it was fighting a losing battle against the huge corporate machine that book publishing became, largely as a result of being addicted to the oil of best-selling books by already-popular authors.

New writers very rarely got a look in. In recent years, however, things have improved, with new authors given much more support by readers themselves as well as numerous competitions, but if the old adage is true that “Everyone’s got a book in them”, then there’s a few billion books still waiting to be publishing.

But where to find the physical space for these books? High street bookshops are already packed with established product, and libraries are not visited as often as perhaps they should be. So that really makes digital publishing the ideal choice.

Amazon’s Kindle ebook reader has proved tremendously successful, with 1 million people thought to be using the handy little device. But Amazon clearly does not have the reach that Google has. The search giant has taken things much further than Amazon has, with deals with famous libraries around the world – including one with the Bibliotheque Nationale de France,  one with the Balliol College of Oxford – as well as winning the agreement of writers’ and publishers’ representative groups, such the Author’s Guild and the Association of American Publishers.

Amazon is one of three major companies – the other two are Microsoft and Yahoo! – objecting to the deal, claiming it would give Google too much power. But the practice has already been established in some form, in some small way by all of these companies, so what’s there to argue about. Perhaps they’re all providing their soundbytes to the media so their organisation or company can benefit from the global publicity this story is getting.

Whatever the reason, it sounds like a good new deal for authors. And because it’s a digital process, there’s unlikely to be any chance of books whose authors not being credited for their work. Many thousands of books that were published in the past, books that may be out of print, often have no author credited. Google has decided to publish these books as part of its electronic publishing move. There doesn’t seem to be much wrong with that. Although if your concern is American cultural imperialism, that’s a different issue.

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