PRS-700 Totally dead-not charging

[Mystico_tala]

I just received my Sony Reader from my aunt a few weeks ago. She barely used it and it was working completely fine. I loaded some books on it and didn't use it for about a week.
When I tried to turn it on nothing happened. I plugged it into the USB charger and nothing happened. The charging light didn't come on, the computer didn't recognize it. I tried resetting it and nothing happened. Same thing when I plugged it into the wall charger. Nothing. No charging light at all. And I left it in (both wall and USB) over night.

Is there anything I can do?
From reading around, I assume that it was accidentally turned on during that week that I didn't use it and the battery ran out. Which seems absurd that you can't recharge the battery when it depletes.

Can the battery somehow be replaced? I heard that sending it into Sony to be fixed costs a small fortune.

Thanks for any help.

~Nikki