The Sony Reader is a line of e-book readers manufactured by Sony

Sony

, commonly referred to as Sony, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan and the world's fifth largest media conglomerate measured by revenues....

. It uses an electronic paper

Electronic paper

Electronic paper, e-paper and electronic ink are a range of display technology which are designed to mimic the appearance of ordinary ink on paper. Unlike conventional backlit flat panel displays, electronic paper displays reflect light like ordinary paper...

 display developed by E Ink Corporation

E Ink Corporation

E Ink Corporation is a privately held manufacturer of electrophoretic displays , a kind of electronic paper. E Ink is located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and was co-founded in 1997 by Joseph Jacobson, a professor in the MIT Media Lab. Two years later, E Ink partnered with Philips to develop and...

, is viewable in direct sunlight, requires no power to maintain a static image, and is usable in portrait or landscape orientation.

Sony sells e-books for the Reader from the Sony eBook Library

Sony eBook Library

Sony Reader Library is iTunes-like software used to manage book, music and image content on the Sony Reader. It enables purchases from The Reader Store from Sony.-External links:* *...

 store in the US and Canada. The Reader also can display Adobe PDFs, ePub

EPUB

EPUB is a free and open e-book standard by the International Digital Publishing Forum...

 format, RSS

RSS

-Mathematics:* Root-sum-square, the square root of the sum of the squares of the elements of a data set* Residual sum of squares in statistics-Technology:* RSS , "Really Simple Syndication" or "Rich Site Summary", a family of web feed formats...

 newsfeeds, JPEG

JPEG

In computing, JPEG . The degree of compression can be adjusted, allowing a selectable tradeoff between storage size and image quality. JPEG typically achieves 10:1 compression with little perceptible loss in image quality....

s, and Sony's proprietary BBeB

BBeB

BBeB is a proprietary eBook file format developed by Sony and Canon. Although initially designed for the Sony Librié, it is also supported by other Sony e-book readers....

 ("BroadBand eBook") format.