Sony Corp. has announced plans to launch the Sony Reader, a portable e-book reader and an electronic book store online. Reuters reported that the Sony Reader is planned to be released on October 1, after missing an earlier unveiling this Spring, due to technical reasons.

The Sony Connect book store will carry about 10,000 books from the top six publishers such as News Corp.’s Harper Collins and CBS Corp.’s Simon and Schuster. The device will sell for around $350, and for a limited period, new Connect customers will receive $50 credit to buy books from the service.

The device is said to support RSS feeds, but only from approved feeds from popular blogs and sites, and does not allow open feed reading. At present, newspapers and other periodicals are not being offered but there may be plans to incorporate various publications.

According to the official website, the system can also the device can also display PDF’s, personal documents, blogs, newsfeeds and JPEGS as well as unsecured MP3s and AAC audio files.

The Reader uses electronic ink technology by E Ink allowing digital text and graphics to be displayed without back-lit screens that can consume a lot of power. Sony states that if the device’s lithium battery is fully charged, 7,500 pages can be shown.

The internal memory of the Reader can hold up to 100 books but memory can be expanded with San Disk cards or memory sticks.

Sony stated that E-books cost on average about 25 percent less than the cover price of physical books.