Faced with competition from Amazon.com's Kindle e-book reader, and now its intended purchase of Audible, Sony has launched eStories for the Sony Reader.

With content downloadable from Sony's own eBook Store and the Borders Online eBook Store, the electronics giant is making more than 1,000 short stories (with more to come) from leading American authors available for download. Stories that can now be downloaded for the Reader from such writers as Philip K. Dick, Orson Scott Card, R.L. Stine, Donald E. Westlake and many others, range in price from 99 cents to $1.99.

If you don't have one of Sony's portable e-book readers and just want a literature fix, you can still buy some stories and read them on a PC.

"The short story has a long standing place in American literature, but over the last several decades, the economics of distribution made it difficult for authors to make their short stories available outside of anthologies and certain literary magazines," said Steve Haber, senior VP of Sony Electronics' Digital Imaging and Audio Division.