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For a couple of days I’ve railed on Sony’s eBook reader as more of the same.  Seems I am not the only one who can’t see the tactic Sony is taking as one with a chance to succeed.  Slate.com’s Farhad Manjoo offers up two step plan to beat the Kindle by doing the “exact opposite” of Sony.

Manjoo adds a subheading that says, “Study everything the iPod’s rivals did.”  I assume he is referring to Sony and their Walkman brand, but I had to stop and think about it.  I wonder if the folks in Cupertino consider Sony a rival for iPod business?  I am getting sidetracked.

Manjoo’s plan is a simple two steps.  Let’s take a look at each:

Step 1: Better and Cheaper

Wow, really?  Manjoo wrote, “Beat the Kindle on features, not just price.”  Seriously?  So if I make something better and cheaper, I should get more customers?  Genius!  Quick, someone fire all the product marketers, kill advertising dollars, just make it better and cheaper and we are done here.  What does “better” mean to Manjoo?  A touchscreen is in the right direction, as is formatting issues.  I’ll come back to these.

Step 2: The big picture

Manjoo’s second pointer is to not only be concerned with the reader, but also with the pipe to deliver content.  Manjoo points to the success of the iPod/iTunes ecosystem that continues to keep customers hooked and draw new ones in.  Other players lacked such tight integration and suffered for it.  Manjoo suggests opening up what content you can put on your reader.  “Kill them with openness” is his drive here and it has some merit.  Trading books is an interesting idea Manjoo raises.

What Manjoo misses

Our editor and I talked about this yesterday while taping the latest InterrupTech (spoiler alert) and both agree that what a Reader device needs is something to grab consumers imagination, something the latest crop sorely misses.  There is no aspiration to carry around a book or a stack of books.  The device needs a visionary that can capture and create the desire to own products.

Changing formatting issues or adding a touchscreen won’t necessarily break through the clutter of daily life and get Joe Consumer to focus on this product as something he needs.  But what if the device cost was subsidized by the local paper?  Whoa, these cash poor institutions can’t afford that; you’ve seen their readership numbers dwindle, right?  What if the subsidization comes with a 2-year commitment plus a percentage of anything purchased on the device (books, magazines, etc).  By bundling the device with services, you create not only a content reason to buy but a bunch more folks trying to sell your product.

By making the entry costs low, consumers will come.  Americans have proven time and time again we’d rather pay nothing up front and get killed on the back end.  Take advantage of this, learn from it.  You don’t have to do the impossible (make it better and cheaper) to turn the corner.  Just be smarter.

Read: [Slate]