Printing companies must love this trend.  Coupled with the continued decline of traditional print media at the hands of online sources, the increase in popularity of eBook readers may very well deal a final blow to that industry’s lasting reign.  To compete with Amazon’s Kindle and a handful of other 3G enabled eBook readers currently on the market, Sony today announced plans to augment its cleverly named Reader line of digital readers with the Reader Daily Edition, a 7″ Eink based device with access to millions of free books via the Google Books project, amongst other eBook stores and subscription services.

Piggybacking at no direct cost to the user on AT&T’s wireless 3G network, the Daily Edition can access and download from Sony’s eBook store a large variety of books and newspapers.  Also through the Sony eBook store, users can use the new Library Finder service to access non-public domain books, although a library card is required and the books expire, becoming inaccessible, at the end of the library’s standard lending period.   And since all Sony’s Readers are compatible with the popular EPUB standard eBook format, books from other vendors can be loaded into the device’s on-board memory via USB connection.    With an estimated price of $399, the Reader Daily Edition should provide ample competition to Amazon’s market leading Kindle.