Sony will launch an electronic bookstore on the Internet and start selling a device that displays e-books purchased from the store October 1, after missing an earlier unveiling in the Spring due to technical reasons, a Reuters report said.

The report said the Sony Connect bookstore would carry about 10,000 books from the top six publishers, including News Corp.'s HarperCollins and CBS's Simon & Schuster.

The launch of the store coincided with the official debut of its highly anticipated electronics book reader, which reviewers had said mimicked the quality of regular paper, the report said.

The ?Sony Reader Portable Reader? system would sell for about $350. For a limited period, new Connect customers would receive a $50 credit to buy books from the service, the report said.

Sony's latest generation reader, announced in North America at the Consumer Electronics Show in January, garnered attention for the electronic ink technology it employed, made by E Ink of Cambridge, Massachusetts. It used new technology that allowed digital text and graphics to be displayed without power-hungry back-lit screens, the report said. Much like regular paper, the Sony Reader screen was not back-lit and required a light source in the room to view the page, the report further said.