In the past several months, especially since the announcement of the Kindle Touch, I’ve mentioned regularly that I expected the Kindle Keyboard to be a thing of the past by early 2012.  While nothing concrete has happened just yet, there are beginning to be small indications that this is beginning to happen.

The most obvious early sign was the fact that the Kindle Touch’s 3G option did not include the same freedoms that we have come to expect in previous models.  Where up until now you could browse freely, albeit in a limited fashion due to the nature of the Kindle’s screen and experimental browser, now users are stuck with only Wikipedia and Amazon’s own store.  Given the size of the ongoing 3G bill that Amazon has to have been racking up over the past several years, this change should be no surprise.  Lifetime 3G for free is going to be hard to keep going without limitations.  What is surprising and makes this stand out is the fact that the Kindle Keyboard did not start having the same restrictions.  If this was really the direction that Amazon has chosen to go, the only easy explanation is that they were waiting to run out existing stock.

More recently, the Kindle Keyboard WiFi w/ Special Offers has silently disappeared from the Kindle Store.  You can still get the more expensive ad-free model, but somehow I doubt that is because Amazon has suddenly decided to drop their advertising subsidized eReader plans.  Not only is it gone, but the newer versions of the sales banner for the Kindle Family are now focused entirely on the newest devices and don’t display the Kindle Keyboard at all.

It would not be surprising to find that even more signs have been given that were just too subtle to be noticed at the time.  I seem to recall there being white versions of both WiFi and 3G Kindle 3 models, for example, but now that is only available for the 3G model.  Hard to say for certain at this point since the graphite frame was so appealing at launch that I didn’t bother picking up a white edition.

Will this be the end of eReaders with physical inputs?  Quite possibly!  The major competition has already moved to entirely touchscreen, though the Nook Simple Touch eReader still has some actual page turning buttons.  The virtual keyboard allows for a lighter, more compact device that is even less intrusive than previous Kindles.  I’m still dealing with mixed feelings regarding this move, having gotten used to my keyboard and not quite having had the same amount of exposure to the new design, but it does seem the way of the future.

If you are still interested in the Kindle Keyboard (formerly Kindle 3), now is really the time to buy.  Lefties will find it especially valuable since the Kindle Touch requires swiping if you want to flip a page forward with your left hand. It offers pretty much everything that the Kindle Touch does aside from X-Ray and the ease of use in highlighting and annotation, but you get the reassuring presence of buttons.  The option won’t be around much longer, I’m sure, but for now you can get either the normal Kindle Keyboard or the Kindle Keyboard 3G w/ Special Offers for just $139.

I’ve mentioned before that Amazon is expanding their international presence significantly lately, especially with regard to the Kindle line.  No longer must an avid reader live in an anglophone country to take advantage of the best selling eReader to date.  The biggest untapped market for anybody looking to sell digital content, however, is probably China.  So far Amazon has been slowly seeping into the country in general and now there are indications that the addition of a Kindle Store may be on the way.

There are a few things that stand in the way of making this work.  The most important of these is government intervention.  Marc Onetto, Senior VP of Amazon’s Worldwide Operations, is said to have been in active negotiations with Chinese officials over how this would work.  While no word has been released by Amazon about where they stand at the moment, the Chinese Government has a tendency to take an active part in censoring information that could make things complicated. It is already often problematic to obtain rights to sell digital content globally even without this sort of oversight, but Amazon clearly has plans.

China has proven to be one of the, if not the, fastest growing market for Amazon in the past year, with revenue up over 80 percent.  They have already got ten distribution hubs set up and warehouse space adding up to about a third of what their Unites States enterprises boast.  All that despite only recently rebranding the site from “Joyo Amazon”, inherited from the company Amazon bought to gain traction in the first place, to Amazon.cn.

Chances are good that these numbers will continue going up for some time, especially if Kindles do start shipping.  There is no word just yet on whether Amazon will be creating relationships with local retailers or just selling the devices online, but either way enthusiasm for the product is likely to be high.

If they get this up and running along when seems to be the intended schedule, this would be the first Asian country to have their own localized Kindle and Kindle Content. It seems inevitable that it would be a somewhat crippled version of the Kindle Store, though.  If nothing else, China’s censorship policies would make it difficult to truly enable the Kindle Direct Publishing platform that gives Amazon a unique edge over the competition in other markets.  On top of this, Onetto did say that they had no intention of forming any sort of connection to existing content providers in this market, indicating that there is going to be some problem with stocking the electronic shelves, so to speak.  How they will get around these difficulties is anybody’s guess.

If the Kindle gets government approval, it is likely to make a big splash.  There is a lot of demand out there for such a product. Don’t expect to be seeing something like the Kindle Fire any time soon, but now that the Kindle 4 and Kindle Touch have opened the door to localized interfaces this will be a big step moving forward.

I don’t think anybody can really doubt at this point that Amazon wants to take their eReading success in the US and replicate it globally.  Amazon in general is an always expanding entity, of course, but specifically the Kindle line has been growing rapidly for some time now and is finally showing up in non-English dominated countries.  Even if nothing else had pointed in that direction, simply the removal of the physical keyboard from the Kindle, a long-standing and almost iconic part of the popular eReader, would have given some hints as to aspirations outside of US markets.  If we take that as a given, though, does Amazon have a chance to make the same sort of impression elsewhere that it has in the United States?

Probably the number one thing that Amazon has going for it when it comes to getting the Kindle Store out there is the Kindle Direct Publishing platform.  This has allowed authors to bring out work that might never have seen the light of day otherwise.  In some cases there was a good reason for that, of course, but the number of success stories from KDP authors is growing all the time and it is becoming increasingly common for new works to be self-published digitally without ever even being offered to major publishers.  There is every reason to believe that this will be a popular service no matter where Amazon makes it available and that as a result they can hope to keep their selection original and diverse in any market.

Self publishers will not be driving an entire eBook industry any time soon, though.  Customers want access to the big names and best selling titles.  Here is where Amazon will be running into some trouble.  Despite, or perhaps because of, the roadblocks that the company has hit from Agency Model price fixing, nobody can compete with the Kindle and publishing houses aren’t prospering in the new market the way they would like to.  While those two facts don’t necessarily have a direct connection, publishers are clearly unhappy with how things are going now that the Kindle and eBooks in general have taken off.  That will have an effect on how publishers who have not as of yet dealt with Amazon will approach forming a new relationship.

On top of this, there is the incredibly complex task of managing rights issues across multitudes of jurisdictions.  Amazon can’t just form a deal to sell a book, they have to make deals to sell every book in every individual country it needs to be sold in.  As any Kindle owners in Canada can attest to, that results in problems with unequal selections.

Will Amazon push through and make the attempt in spite of the complications?  Of course.  They’re already doing it.  I would guess that after this first major push to hit what they perceive to be the best potential markets, though, we see a couple years of consolidation.  When it comes to the Kindle, Amazon has proven they have a desire to deliver quality over quantity and that can’t always be rushed.

Continuing a trend of building their international presence, both in eBooks and beyond, Amazon appears to be making arrangements to bring their Kindle line to Japan as early as then end of this year.  While the company has been operating their Amazon.jp site for some time now, there have been complications in offering customers the Kindle until this point.  Hopefully that is soon to be a thing of the past.

Japanese publishers have shown themselves to be very hesitant to allow Amazon to acquire content, citing concerns about the online retail giant’s increasing level of control and influence in anglophile markets.  This, in addition to Amazon’s habitual price cuts led to them to question whether there was money to be made in Kindle Store content.

After Sony’s recent successful entry with the Reader PRS-650 at the beginning of this year, though, there has been reason to hope these companies are coming around. If nothing else, there is definite pressure from consumers who are quickly growing increasingly familiar with the potential of eBooks and eReaders and want to be able to take advantage of them.The solution to the publisher impasse seems to have taken the form of building a predefined framework for the timing and rate of discounts.  Publishers will, according to reports, be consulted before any such discounts were put in place.

Should Amazon manage to carve out a place for the Kindle in the Japanese eBook market, it could be a huge move.  Right now this space has been comparatively underexploited for a variety of reasons.  To make it work, however, they’ll need to do more than just set up a Kindle Store.

The first step will be getting the entire newest generation of Kindle eReaders out there.  The Kindle 4 and Kindle Touch, due to their virtual keyboards, both provide the ability to display Japanese characters in every part of the eReader’s function.  Just one advantage of doing away with the physical keyboard, I suppose.  Without the Kindle Touch, however, competing with even the Sony PRS-T1 would be difficult no matter the price of the Kindle 4.  Right now Amazon.uk is offering the Kindle 4 and the Kindle Keyboard without the touchscreen model, but that won’t do much good in an area where the English keyboard is less useful. These need to be available not just online but in retailers as well.  Exposure will be vital, and partnerships will need to be formed.

While the Kindle Fire is currently only available for pre-order in the US, it would make a great deal of sense for Amazon to push Japan as the first other market to get access to it.  Unfortunately, given that this would require a lot of effort to grab distribution rights in a wide variety of media forms it seems like a long shot.  An effort by Amazon to acquire these rights and expand its influence seems to be inevitable, but it won’t come quickly or easily and a half-hearted attempt would do more harm than good.

Amazon.fr launched the first ever French language version of the Kindle October 7th.  Amazon’s (NASDAQ: AMZN) customers in France will have access to 35,000 e-books in French.  This includes bestsellers, graphic novels, and classics.

In addition to the titles offered in French, customers will have access to the 800,000+ Amazon Kindle e-book collection in English and other languages.

Amazon.fr is taking pre-orders for the French language Kindle today at www.amazon.fr/kindle.

According to Amazon’s latest press release, there is a huge variety of books by bestselling French authors, as well as popular French magazines and newspapers.

“The French Kindle Store’s vast selection of content includes popular titles from best-selling authors such as Katherine Pancol, Delphine de Vigan, Harlan Coben, Stéphane Hessel, Haruki Murakami, Françoise Bourdin and Michel Houellebecq in a wide range of categories. Customers will also find the largest selection of popular graphic novels available for download including titles from The Largo Winch Series of Francq and Van Hamme, Julia and Roem from Bilal and Walking Dead. Customers can also find top French newspapers and magazines such as Le Monde, Les Echos, Le Figaro, Libération andAujourd’hui en France/Le Parisien available for single purchase or subscription. Independent authors and publishers can also now use Kindle Direct Publishing to make their books available in Amazon.fr’s Kindle Store.”

-Amazon French Kindle Store Press Release

Like it’s internationally bestselling English language counterpart, The French language version of the Kindle is lightweight, and super inexpensive at only 99€.  It has apps available on a variety of PC, tablet and smartphone platforms.  It also has built in Wi-Fi and lasts for up to one month on a single charge.  Not to mention the crisp, clear e-ink display and font size adjustments.

So, it looks like the Kindle is taking off in Europe with a presence in the UK, Spain, Germany, and now France.  What an exciting time for e-readers on the international front, and a giant step towards global literacy.

Everybody knows that Amazon doesn’t release the sales numbers for their Kindle eReader.  That being said, some analysts have estimated that the popular eReader will sell over 17 million units this year alone and that the platform as a whole now accounts for as much as 10% of Amazon’s overall revenue.  That doesn’t mean that the Kindle is unassailable, of course, but it is definitely difficult.  The Barnes & Noble Nook has proved both parts of that.  Now, in an effort to revive flagging sales numbers, British bookseller Waterstone’s is going to try to replicate the B&N success story.

James Daunt, the Waterstone’s managing director, said in a recent BBC 4 radio interview that he was inspired by the Nook’s success in the US market.  So far, Barnes & Noble has not decided to expand their eReader presence beyond the US in spite of the exceptionally favorable reviews of their most recent generation of devices, which leaves a gap in the market for somebody else to exploit. Lately, given the consistent downward trend of most of Barnes & Noble’s non-Nook numbers, this seems like a great model for an otherwise declining company to make a comeback with.

Right now, Waterstone’s does not have a hardware partner or much in the way of solid details in terms of their intended offering.  Daunt has claimed that the company is “well down the planning line” on the way to an early 2012 launch are somewhat encouraging, but there is a lot to get done for such an ambitious move.  This is a fairly late stage to be entering into eReading on short notice, given the high quality of the current generation of eReaders.  Even the Kindle is sometimes only considered second-best by comparison these days.  That’s a lot to measure up to for any newcomer.

Since the closing of Borders Books and Books Etc, Waterstones seems to be the only major brick and mortar book seller in the UK market.  At a glance this seems to be something of a last-ditch effort.  The Waterstone’s internet storefront, which has been selling eBooks for some time now, has failed to compete successfully against the Kindle’s UK store.  A hardware tie-in would guarantee some returning business, but only if customers can be persuaded to adopt the new platform in the long term.

One of the biggest considerations for people seeking to build their own eBook library is whether or not their purchases will eventually be rendered useless by the end of a format or the closing of their chosen retailer.  Whereas Amazon seems to be around for pretty much the foreseeable future, Waterstone’s will have to make a big impression to avoid losing customers to the fear of obsolescence.  Add into that the overwhelming probability that there will be a new and improved Kindle released even before the Waterstone’s eReader comes to market and it will be a much tougher sale to make.

As always, competition is the most important driving factor for product improvement and customers should welcome a new serious contender to the eReader marketplace, but so far there isn’t enough detail to get your hopes up for.

Amazon’s new @author feature is a new addition to their Kindle-based social media effort.  Currently in a limited beta release, the feature promises to create an even closer author to reader connection by allowing readers to send along questions for their favorite authors right from the Kindle itself.  While it may turn out to be a mixed blessing for authors already being pulled in far more directions than ever before to get maximum exposure, many will undoubtedly welcome the opportunity.

In its ideal use case, the @author feature will be a source for frequent connections with curious readers that allows for one-on-one contact and gives readers a chance to resolve points of confusion by going directly to the source.  At the same time, since questions are visible from the author’s Amazon page and answerable by anybody, this should help to foster a sense of community among readers.  It seems a lot like Kindle authors are getting the best of both worlds.  There are promotional opportunities from the comfort of their own homes when they are building an audience and an open forum for discussion when that audience gets large enough and involved enough that people start answering each other’s questions.

Obviously the advantage for Amazon in all of this is that the Kindle‘s integration into the communication process will give it that much more pull on customers and potential Kindle Direct Publishing authors.  The user experience of the upcoming Kindle Tablet will also involve tighter connections than ever to the Amazon.com storefront, which makes this a further selling point for the new hardware, at least among readers, should they market it properly.

There are potential downsides with this, as with all new services.  Because it is still a limited beta release, we have no real way of knowing what kind of moderation the @author question/answer system will enjoy upon release.  As anybody who frequents the Amazon product forums can attest, open discussion on the site doesn’t always tend toward the most productive side of things.  There is also a new set of authorial duties that will take some getting used to.

Since the ride of eBooks began, many have expressed concern that the increased emphasis on self publishing would result in the best marketers rising to the top rather than the best writers.  In theory, after all, the role of the publishing house was to select the best of the best to bring readers only exactly what they want to read.  In some ways, it’s a very important concern.  Sure, you can now sell your own book without bothering to get an agent, editor, or publisher, but now you also have to complete every stage of development from the start with no large support structure.

Undoubtedly some amazing authors have fallen by the side of the road for exactly that reason.  Overall though, with the sheer number of increasingly successful Kindle authors, we’ve seen an increase in the number of great writers being read.  This will probably bring a little bit more hassle for some people, but it will also facilitate convenient conversation and have a net positive effect for any author smart enough to take advantage of it.

Amazon is all set to launch their new Amazon.es site in Spain on September 15th, according to sources in several Spanish newspapers.  While the service will cover only physical goods at the time the store opens, it will expand to digital content including a Spanish Kindle Store before the end of the year.  This will be a big step in eCommerce for a country that has reportedly been somewhat late to the game so far, as well as expanding the Amazon empire even more.

The lack of a local Amazon presence hasn’t stopped the company from developing a substantial Spanish following over the years.  It is reportedly quite common for people to order through extra-national Amazon sites in order to ensure fair prices, reliable delivery, and good customer service in a way that hasn’t been directly available in the Spanish marketplace.  Some even associate the slow adoption of online retail in Spain to the fact that the country has lacked an Amazon presence up until now, so this will spur things for the better in a number of ways.

One place where Amazon will not necessarily have an automatic lead over the competition will, surprisingly, be in the field of eReading.  The Amazon.es site is slated to have a Kindle Store open late this year, while the Kobo release is expected any time now, if earlier promises to have their store open by the end of the summer can be believed.  Kobo has managed to outdo Kindle on the international front so far in a number of ways, so this is just another front in an ongoing conflict.

On top of the lack of status as the first people on the scene, the Kindle Store in question will not be able to set prices in an advantageous way.  There are means in place in Spain to fix eBook prices across the market at about 30% below the cost of their print equivalent. As in the US following the introduction of Agency Model pricing, Amazon will have to find other ways to add value to their platform aside from low prices.  If nothing else, at least it’s an effort that they have practice making.

Amazon currently maintains a presence beyond the United States in France, Germany, China, Italy, Canada, Japan, and the UK.  Their Kindle line has made it to the UK and Germany so far, with further international expansion said to be a priority.

Many have conjectured that there will be a large push with localized devices is loosely planned for after the introduction of a Kindle without a hardware keyboard, which would obviously help with pressing adoption in countries where English is not the primary language.  Time will tell if this manifests, but with many expecting a new Kindle with a touchscreen as early as October there would seem to be very little to prevent it.  The speculated-upon move to an Android OS for the Kindle eReader in addition to the Kindle Tablet might make localization more problematic, but until an implementation is actually seen it is hard to do more than speculate.

While eBook sales have been expanding across the board and the Kindle is flourishing with ever-increasing sales each year, very little has been heard about the Kindle Edition eBook / A/V hybrid that was once touted as a potential future for the eBook.  The explanations for this failure to thrive is fairly simple are understand, but do they mean that the format is dead?

Probably the main failing, in my eyes, was the lack of logical transition for the customer.  Books are familiar territory for most people.  Audio and video are separate concerns.  The only place that the average eBook customer is likely to encounter a combination of the two is while browsing the internet.  When the best comparison that a reader can draw is to something they already encounter for free on a daily basis, it would take some fairly strong marketing to increase the perceived value.

It didn’t help anything that the nature of the integration made it impossible to access on the Kindle eReader itself.  The whole platform, while offering a reading experience to anybody with a screen and internet access, is pretty much built around the eReader.  Having content that cannot be accessed through this doesn’t do as much good as one would prefer.

On top of that, you have no Android app access, meaning that the only customers who even have the option of reading their purchases away from the PC are Apple iOS users.  Soon even they won’t be a valid audience.  Given recent issues with the Apple App Store guideline enforcement, Amazon is clearly prodding iOS users in the direction of the new Kindle Cloud Reader which does not yet (and seems unlikely in the near future to) support A/V integration.

Price must also be considered a factor.  While it is true that the integration of extra-textual layers brings some added value to a book, it seems difficult to justify the additional cost for many of the available texts.  The experience is often similar to the special features on a DVD.  It might be worth a small about more than simply the main experience, but not enough to justify a noticeable jump in price.  Of course, without that price you have added investment beyond the core book that is not being compensated for.  A bit of a dilemma.

Does this mean the end of the project?  While it is clear that priorities have to be elsewhere right this minute, I can see this being something Amazon comes back to in the future.  The upcoming Kindle Tablet will have the hardware necessary to allow this sort of integration again and will hopefully be accessible to far more users, in terms of price, than the iPad was at launch.  Assuming that Amazon does not intend to break the Kindle completely away from the app marketplace in favor of browser-based applications, this would also finally result in a working Kindle for Android A/V presence which would further increase the value of the product line.  For now, not really a major factor in the Kindle‘s success.

While the focus of Amazon’s new content duplication policy for the Kindle Store is clearly an effort to eliminate the Kindle spam that has become an ongoing problem for customers, it has a couple less obvious effects that work to the advantage of both the company and the customers.  Much of the speculation regarding how the Kindle Store could be cleared of worthlessly repetitive content revolved around the most efficient and advantageous methods that they might have available and clearly an interesting one was found.

The most obvious change, though not entirely new, is to the out of copyright publication.  Perhaps the biggest problem that these have posed many consumers is their variety.  Now, normally variety is always a good thing.  When you know that the content you are acquiring is going to be the same no matter where you get it, however, having ten, twenty, or even fifty versions of the same thing to choose from is simply not helpful.  The in-text annotation and added content that one expects with the many different print editions available to choose from do not translate well to the Kindle experience just yet.  Amazon has done quite well in the past few months at reducing the clutter among these titles, but with the apparent automation of the duplicate-checking that they now have in place it will be that much easier and more reliable.

They have also done a great job of ensuring the most up to date content library available for Kindle customers.  While it would be illegal and quite definitely against all policy to post a stolen work to the Kindle Store, it has not been an unknown occurrence.  Since I started publishing through them, I have personally had three books stolen and attributed to other authors and I know that I am far from the worst affected.  Now, so long as I am the first one to upload my work, there is no need to worry about it.  Not only does this do an excellent job of protecting authors and simplifying the review process for Amazon, since they no longer have to worry about nearly as many theft complaints, it gives further incentive for all self-publishing authors to head to the Kindle Direct Publishing first.

If only to save on the headache of dealing with verifications and lost sales due to delays, authors will likely now feel that much more inclined to give the Kindle priority.  After all, once it is up on the Kindle Store, nobody else should be able to post that content unless the original posting is removed first.  Why risk having to go through the trouble of eliminating an illegal copy made by somebody who downloaded the work elsewhere?

Overall, while I can see specific situations where taking the review process out of human hands could result in over-enforcement, this will do a lot to improve the shopping experience for Kindle owners.  It will do even more to protect authors.  When you take those two groups and keep them happy, it makes life easier for Amazon and makes it even more likely that people new to publishing will choose the KDP.  This would seem to be wins all around.

After a few weeks of rather vocal complaints regarding the state of the Kindle Store and the increasing difficulty in finding worthwhile content, Amazon has come up with a response.  Despite the potential for it to cause discomfort for a certain number of Kindle Direct Publishing users, it looks like significant measures are underway to address the problems.  The days when searching for a Kindle Edition would bring up hundreds of nearly worthless, nearly identical eBooks are coming to an end.

The origin of the problem stems from the nature of these spam offerings.  While in the main they are useless and nothing anybody would want to buy, very few of them are deliberately malicious aside from their failing to provide value to customers.  You can’t risk cracking down on authors who are just not good at their job.  The deliberately malign options are, of course, policed rather strongly.  Somewhat legitimate titles, built using content from Private Label Rights authors who sell their work to others for a small fee can be harder to track down.  These are titles that the purchaser can pay once for and have legal use of, including author credit and editing privileges.  Some of these works have the potential to be at least somewhat useful, and there is nothing illegal about the process, but once the idea caught on with internet marketing enthusiasts it was bound to result in exploitation.

Amazon’s solution is to remove titles that are filled with “undifferentiated or barely differentiated” content.  Since the whole point of PLR is to sell the same thing to many people and make your money off of the bulk, only allowing a single person to make use of the work effectively removes it from circulation.  Those “publishers” who have chosen to exploit the system are receiving email warnings that inform them of the removal of their less than useful Kindle eBooks and the consequences of continuing the practice:

Hello,

We’re contacting you regarding books you recently submitted via Kindle Direct Publishing.

Certain of these books are either undifferentiated or barely differentiated from an existing title in the Kindle store. We remove such duplicate (or near duplicate) versions of the same book because they diminish the experience for customers. We notify you each time a book is removed, along with the specific book(s) and reason for removal.

In addition to removing duplicate books from the Kindle store, please note that if you attempt to sell multiple copies or undifferentiated versions of the same book from your account, we may terminate your account.

If you have any questions regarding the review process, you can write to [email protected].

To be fair, you have to give a great deal of credit to the community involved in this practice for their reaction.  While there have been a few people recommending the move from Kindle to Nook platforms as a short-term solution, overall it seems that the end of PLR exploitation was anticipated.  There will probably be no major outcry regarding this policy change, even among the people most affected by it.  They knew they were exploiting a loophole that would eventually be closed.

For those who have been paying attention, it doesn’t come as much of a shock to hear that people are unhappy about the rise in price of Kindle eBooks caused by the Agency Model pricing forced on Amazon by the largest publishing houses in the business.  Apple came out with iBooks as a means of adding value to the iPad’s initial launch, and in doing so arranged things to prevent Amazon from having an advantage.  They went to the publishers, worked out an industry-wide deal, and ended the era of the affordably priced eBook.  Now, finally, somebody is calling them on it.

The basis for the suit is a number of early indications that Apple knew ahead of time that all of the major publishers would be turning on Amazon at the same time.  A much publicized Wall Street Journal article from early 2010 had Steve Jobs clearly aware of the impending changes and certain not only of his company’s ability to price match but of the publishers’ willingness to boycott Amazon in order to change the state of the market.  While Amazon did make every attempt to keep the Kindle Store free of such manipulation and price hiking, in the end each publisher is the controller of its own works and they were forced to concede defeat in order to keep the content available to Kindle readers.

The suit charges Apple and the five largest publishing companies with antitrust violations, among other things, and would seek to represent anybody who has purchased an eBook since the prices jumped over 30% practically overnight last year.  If successful, the Agency Model would be completely overturned, as would the arrangements currently in place preventing price discrepancies between retailers.

There is every reason to believe that this has at least a chance of success.  It is not even the first legal obstacle that publishers have faced since they turned on the Kindle.  In 2010 both Amazon and Apple were brought to talks with the Attorney General of Connecticut, who had concerns that the abrupt change would lead to a situation where competition between companies would be impossible.  Such anti-competitive behavior would of course be a dangerous thing to be involved in, but the companies being looked at at the time were clearly not colluding.  This time, looking at Apple and the publishers, it might not pass quite so easily.

Though it will be months, at best, before there is even an indication of which way this is likely to turn out, it is possible that there will be some change in the meantime.  eBooks are the only area where the publishing industry seems to be growing lately, and the Kindle platform is the driving force behind eBook sales in the US.  Anything that publishers can do to improve sales will be to their advantage, and they have shown at least some small interest in the potential from reduced pricing.  Will it be enough to change the face of eBook publishing without legal intervention?  Time will tell.  It seems inevitable that publishers will come to their senses eventually and drive their numbers up any way that works, though, and the success of the lawsuit is still just speculation.

Earlier this year, in April, Amazon launched a localized German Kindle Store with over 650,000 titles and around 25,000 German language offerings.  Overall, at least for the time, a strong offering.  In addition to this, Amazon opened up Kindle Direct Publishing for the Amazon.de site, and made sure that Direct Publishing submissions to the original Kindle Store would already be in the German store, assuming rights were available to make this possible.  Now, three months later, competition is becoming a bit more heated and this might not be enough to stay appealing to the broader audience on its own.

The Canada based Kobo eBook store will now be available to the German audience.  At launch, they have managed a reported 2.4 million eBooks and over 80,000 German language titles.  That’s a lot of books.  Along with the store launch, there are also German language Kobo eReader apps for the iPhone, iPad, basically anything with an ‘i’ in front of it, and Android.  A Playbook app is on the way.  There will even be a German version of the Kobo eReader itself released in August.  Now, the Kobo business model has always been aimed at a broad international presence.  They emphasize open systems, EPUB distribution, and the primacy of the reading experience.  Even the Kobo eReader seemed tacked on as almost an afterthought.  So far, however, they haven’t really hit the big time.

The main problem that they are running into, I think, is their lack of hardware emphasis.  Not as a means of profit, of course, but as a way to provide a physical presence to their customers.  We know that Amazon isn’t exactly making loads off of individual Kindle sales, but by providing something better than a PC or cell phone for their customers to read on, they gain customer loyalty.  If you’re stuck using a phone for your eBooks anyway, it doesn’t matter in practice who you buy from since the apps are all free anyway.

The new Kobo eReader suffered something of a setback when its otherwise impressive upgrades from the original Kobo were completely overshadowed by the superior experience and competitive pricing of the new Nook Simple Touch eReader.  By comparison, it’s just a better product.  So Kobo is given that much more incentive to push their international pursuits since the Kindle presence is limited and the Nook is non-existent.  In untouched or underrepresented eBook markets, the Kobo store can stand on its own merits and try to build up a hardware independent following, at least in theory.

The one obstacle I see, at least right this minute, is the lack of eReader offering at store launch.  If you’re going to have a localized device, great!  It sets you that much further apart from the Kindle.  Don’t expect to launch the store now and have people stay excited about it for a month while they wait for the gadget. If they can keep the buzz going, great, but it’s going to be a difficult task.

As for the future of the Kobo?  They are currently planning similar store launches in Spain, France, Italy, and Holland, to name a few.  While I might personally prefer other offerings available in America, possibly because I speak English primarily and don’t have to pay fees to import things that don’t always even work in my country, there is little wrong with the Kobo and anything that builds up the worldwide eBook marketplace will just help things along for everybody.

Something that most early adopters of the Kindle were eager to see was the impressive price drops that eBooks promised to bring.  Compared to the expense of creating, transporting, and retailing a paper book, how could the eBook not make large libraries an inexpensive pursuit?  To a certain extent, of course, we did see this for a while.  Even now, during the reign of the Agency Model of eBook pricing, there are still impressive discounts to be found.  That’s not even taking into consideration the impressive selection of indie authors who have sprung up thanks to the Kindle Store.  Something I think many people miss when talking about this topic is that the price rebound, even if it does involve artificial inflation from the “Big 6″, could not succeed without consumer cooperation.

The easy comparison when talking about eBooks is the print book.  It’s almost too obvious to be worth stating.  Something that people often forget when making that comparison, however, is that comparing and equating are two different things.  A Kindle is not meant to be a cheap substitute for print.  It provides benefits beyond any potential savings that have a chance to provide value equal to the paper copies for many people.  When you buy from the Kindle Store you get instant access to a selection greater than any single physical bookstore could offer in person, faster delivery than any online retailer of paper copies could hope to achieve, portability between all of your Kindle-equipped devices, and a number of other benefits.  The question tends to become what you value in your purchase.

For some people, it makes sense to shop for the lowest price available.  If the eBook is cheaper, as most people expect it to be, then there is little problem.  When the paperback is actually cheaper than the eBook, however, we see problems.  It is certainly true that the paper book provides certain benefits that the eBook doesn’t.  We’ve all been over them before.  It also has any number of shortcomings of its own.  I, personally, would rather have an eBook because my mass market paperbacks keep wearing out on me.  So far, nothing I’ve bought on the Kindle Store has fallen apart.

I am not trying to make the point that eBook prices are right where they should be.  I think everybody is still trying to figure out where things are going to settle with regard to that.  The fact is, though, that the eBook as a format brings more to the table than price drops.  If there weren’t people who would rather have their collections of bestsellers on a Kindle instead of a bookshelf, sales would drop off on those books to the point where even the most stubborn publishers would have to consider changing things around.  Perhaps, rather than talking solely about the sacrifices that are necessary when choosing an eBook over a paper book, it would be more useful to think about what it is that brings you to the eBook as a choice in the first place.  There is obviously something the average Kindle Store customer values beyond the savings.

As many of you may be aware, the deadline for app developers to comply with Apple’s new competition stifling rules is the end of this month.  So far, no changes are evident in either the Amazon Kindle for iOS app or even the Barnes & Noble Nook app.  While it would seem odd for this to be the case this close to the deadline, I’m thinking it might be a carefully made decision on Amazon’s part.

We know by now, or at least are overwhelmingly confident, that there will be a Kindle Tablet coming later this year.  By releasing something like that, Amazon sets themselves up for a far more justified version of the old Kindle vs iPad debate.  They need to set themselves apart as a device company.  The way I see it, Android isn’t enough at this point.  Too many other people are already working with it.  Even having their own on-site app store won’t necessarily wow anybody.  Some good publicity would help though.

Assume for a moment that the Kindle for iOS app doesn’t get changed in any way before the June 30th deadline.  Apple will then have two choices.  They can either follow through on threats to remove apps in violation of the new rules or they can publicly admit that they need what these developers bring to the table.  I think it’s likely that banning will occur.

Amazon’s response to this, if planned correctly, could be huge publicity.  I would expect something along the lines of a public statement explaining that the Kindle Store simply cannot productively operate under the restrictions that Apple is trying to place on it, but that as a service to their loyal customers the app will be chopped down to comply with the new rules enough so that existing customers can still read what they’ve bought while Amazon examines other solutions.  Then, a month or two down the line, a full roll-out of Kindle for the Web that completely bypasses the need for apps.

Yes, under the new rules Amazon could just raise prices of in-app purchases to make up the margin that Apple is demanding.  This would bring them nothing but ill will from the average Kindle for iOS user, though.  With the new line of Kindle Tablets pending, these are the same customers that Amazon has to be hoping to win away.  Probably not the smartest thing to pass on fees to them.

They could also choose to simply announce that all purchases must be done on the website and do away with the in-app purchasing links.  I think that’s probably what will happen with the post-banning reboot of the app, should my scenario prove true, but it would cause the loss of impulse buying opportunity for a large portion of the Kindle user base without also providing any sort of good PR.  I just don’t see that making sense right now.

We’ll know by the end of the month, of course, but right now there hasn’t been any intention to comply expressed by Amazon.  Most likely, they’ll just stand by and watch Apple shoot themselves in the foot while pointing out that the Kindle makes a great, affordable eReader alternative to putting up with that sort of ridiculousness.  The Kindle for iOS app doesn’t seem likely to be as profitable for the company under the new guidelines anyway, so they might as well get that preemptive jump on Apple in the public eye.

Among the many advantages to owning a Kindle is the fact that there are thousands of books available cheaply or for free.  Even that is an understatement.  No matter what your tastes, chances are good that there is something in the Kindle Store that you will enjoy for $2.99 or less.  The only question is how to find it.  Especially in light of the recently publicized issues with increasing Kindle Store Spam, the question of proper filters becomes important.

Right now, it is easy to find the top selling Kindle Editions, whether they be paid content or free.  The algorithm might be a bit odd, but the results are right there on the front page of the Kindle Store.  We also get the occasional special promotion and a list of some of the most popular selections from some category in the store.  Pretty much what you might expect.  Nowhere do we have a list of Kindle Deals or anything similar.  I think we need one.

I’m not talking about just a category that lists all of the cheap or free Kindle eBooks, of course.  Not only would the sheer size of such a list make it almost as unmanageable as looking through a complete listing of the Store’s content, but it would include the sort of things that we need to filter out.  A deal isn’t really a deal unless you’re getting good value for your money.  That excludes the spam, plagiarism, and any number of other things that are inherently hard to automatically sort through.  So, how does one define a “deals” category?

At the very least, breaking it free from anything in the way of human interaction, it should be simple enough to set it to filter for a set maximum price, minimum number of sales/reviews, and possibly include some method of prioritizing recent price drops.  In the end, I don’t think this is the answer, though.  What is needed is an actual person, or persons, to make the judgment call.  There is a good chance that the Kindle Sunshine Deals experiment was meant in part to test the waters for this very concept.  It works because you’ve got affordably priced eBooks that have made it through at least some degree of scrutiny before being included.  In the case of Sunshine Deals, they’d passed through the hands of a publisher, but that doesn’t need to be the only channel available for something like this.

Probably, talking about this will turn out to be a moot point.  I anticipate at least some shift in perception among publishers once the results of the Kindle Sunshine Deals promotion have been more thoroughly reviewed.  More affordably priced eBooks, yes, but also better publicizing of those eBooks that are priced low enough to be noteworthy.  It isn’t enough to just throw up a book and price it at $2.99, as many authors new to self-publishing for the Kindle have found.  You have to get word out there and make sure that customers know that there are deals to be had and value to be found.

As the Kindle Store is bombarded with countless titles of little or no value to potential purchasers, Amazon has to be wondering what can be done to keep this situation from casting a bad light on the whole Kindle brand.  It’s still a great device with an impressive attached store, but who wants to have to look out for scams and malware links when they’re just trying to grab a book?  The problem is that there’s a fairly subtle difference between honestly bad books and the pretty much useless content that users of systems like Autopilot Kindle Cash that attempt to exploit the system.  How do you tell when an author is putting out something they genuinely expect people to want to have paid money for?  I have a couple ideas.

First, I think that it is not unreasonable to restrict the number of book postings that an individual author can make in a day, except by special request.  Currently, as far as I can tell, there is little regulation on the process unless you are trying to fit into the Kindle Singles category.  Do we really believe that many authors have a genuine need to even consider publishing 10 books in a day, or 100 books in a week?  I understand that throwing up the back catalog of an author can involve a lengthy list sometimes and I think that should be possible if they clear it with Amazon Customer Service first, but as a general situation there’s no real need.  Why not say that you can only post one book per day, or three per week, and take the easiest means of profiting from these exploitative tactics away?

Perhaps a better way would be to have a way for verified purchasers of Kindle books be able to flag a purchase as spam.  Make it work off of a percentage system, wherein any Kindle Edition eBook that is flagged by 30% or more of purchasers (with a minimum of five or so to prevent the most blatant forms of abuse) is either taken down for review or publicly labeled as potentially harmful until it can be reviewed.  This would allow Amazon to get away with letting their customers police the system in a manner similar to the existing ratings system and point the finger at bad uploads for removal at the company’s convenience.

I realize that both systems come with their own problems, of course, but something needs to be done.  Millions of Kindle owners and readers simply deserve better than what’s being thrown at them.  Maybe adopt something like these fairly simple ideas, but have a method whereby authors can apply for exemption as needed?  It is a complex issue.  There are enough obstacles to deal with in the transition away from paper books that we don’t need this to be an ongoing problem, though.  It is time for Amazon to make use of the control inherent in having their own platform to change things for the better.

As the weeks go by and the holiday sales season gets ever closer, we get more and more details about the upcoming Kindle Tablets.  Yes, their very existence has only been hinted at in anything resembling official Amazon.com communication, but we know it’s coming.  It’s only a matter of figuring out in what forms and with what focus.  Now we have a bit more of a line on what the higher-end option of what appears to be the initial release group will be.

It shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise to find out that the Kindle Tablet reportedly codenamed “Hollywood” would have a visual media focus to it.  Now, though, we have a bit more to go on than random conjecture based on that name.  A recent report note from investment firm Detwiler Fenton indicates that the anticipated tablet will have a 10″ color screen as well as a bundled trial of an Amazon video streaming service such as, or possibly exactly the same as, that offered at the moment as a perk to Amazon Prime members.  It will also feature significantly more processing power than the other Kindle Tablet offering or offerings expected to launch around the same time, which when added to the anticipated pricing of around $399 would seem to make it a very real threat to the industry leading iPad.

Now, we know that Amazon has been doing so amazingly well with the existing Kindle line because of their focus on selling content for the whole platform rather than simply a line of physical eReading devices.  Rumors go so far as to say that the Kindle itself is being sold near cost.  It makes sense, by extension, that they will want to continue this approach in other forms of media if possible. Video makes perfect sense, as does music.  They have a presence in the retail market for both, in addition to the app marketplace that we have to assume will work exceptionally well with the new Kindle Tablets.  I anticipate an expansion of all of these either in terms of content or functionality before the launch, of course.

If the Kindle ‘Hollywood” Tablet is going to be pointed at the iPad, like many of us are assuming, it will only really have a chance if Amazon can compete successfully against the iTunes store.  That means streaming audio and video, cloud storage, and an amazing selection.  Nothing less will do.  Right now the Amazon Instant Video Store is a decent start, but it only does so much.  We are definitely likely to see an expansion of the offerings by the holidays as well as an extended Amazon Prime membership benefit list that takes advantage of it.  What else happens will depend in large part on what the other new Kindle offerings are focussed on.  A pocket-sized Kindle, perhaps, with a heavy music or audiobook emphasis?  There are a bunch of different openings for new media-consumption devices that remain to be exploited.  You have to admit, though, video is a great start.

The eReader marketplace has reached the point where, in terms of hardware, there simply isn’t a bad option anymore.  Both the Amazon Kindle and the Barnes & Noble Nook give amazing value for the money, serve their purposes well, and generally are forced to emphasize trivial differences to keep customers aware that there are performance differences at all(1 month of battery life?  2 months? Is this really important enough to advertise?).  So, how do you decide which way to go?  Unless you’re a gadget collector, chances are you won’t be grabbing both.  The problem is that choosing one makes it impressively difficult to move to the other later.

When you buy an eBook from either Amazon or Barnes & Noble, it generally comes with DRM locking you in to their system.  You can’t just swap your books back and forth.  Sure, there are ways to remove this protection, but it’s probably best to just choose a long term favorite rather than going through the effort or moral ambiguity of illegally removing it.  On the plus side, this isn’t nearly as restrictive as it sounds on a day to day basis no matter which option you choose.  Both Amazon and Barnes & Noble will let you read your books on pretty much anything with a screen these days.  Even if you find, several years down the line, that your eReader has broken and the product has been discontinued, you will still be able to load your entire library on your computer, cell phone, tablet, etc.

What should really be driving choice for consumers right now is the library that a particular platform brings to the table.  Really, in an ideal world, this would always have been what drove choices but I’m being realistic.  Thanks to the publishing industry’s Agency Model pricing, how much you spend on professionally published eBooks is going to be pretty universal.  The same is true, though for different reasons, of most self-publishers.  There’s just no real incentive in place to favor one system over another and risk ostracizing a potential set of customers.

In most situations, the selection isn’t even particularly different.  While I’ve found several eBooks in the Kindle Store that I could not find in its B&N counterpart, this is a fairly rare event and will almost never come up in normal use.  I would say that Amazon has a slight advantage in terms of selection right now simply by virtue of running several of their own publishing imprints to push, but it is a minor point.

What I think you have to weigh is the permanence of the system you are buying into.  Your purchases will always be yours.  That is pretty much a given.  No matter what you buy from whom these days, you’re fine with regard to long term accessibility. Do you really want to have to switch platforms, and in doing so maintain two libraries because who wants to lose all of their old book purchases?  This is why things like iBooks are out.  If Apple gives up and folds on eBooks or gets so restrictive that their selection suffers even more, the idea of being stuck with them for new purchases is unpleasant.

Both the Kindle and the Nook platforms give their customers the kind of functionality and long term commitment that they need to, I think.  In one form or another, they’re going to stick around for the foreseeable future.  I’m not saying that it’s a plus to be locked into a single platform, or that it’s fair, or that life wouldn’t be better without DRM, I’m just pointing out the current equivalencies in the marketplace.  Maybe at some point we’ll reach a place where it isn’t in a company’s interest to keep their customers shopping specifically in their stores, but for now we might as well make the best of it. There isn’t too much real ground for complaints from what I can tell.

Were you aware that even people who don’t live in the United States are interested in the Kindle?  I was shocked.  Ok, well, not that shocked.  Lame attempts at humor aside, Amazon has just opened up a localized Kindle store for German readers.  While this is a mixed blessing, which I’ll get into in a moment, the fact that more countries are getting their own Kindle stores is always going to be good news for the residents thereof.

The roll-out for the German store seems to have gone fairly smoothly.  Where before the only way to get a Kindle in Germany was to order through the US Amazon store, it is now available directly through Amazon.de and ties into the associated Amazon.de user account. Customers can already choose from over 650,000 titles (including 71 of 100 Spiegel bestsellers according to the press release), thousands of self published German authors using the Kindle Direct Publishing service, and a good selection of popular international and German magazines and newspapers.  All of this is available to users of both the Kindle eReader itself and the Kindle app family, including the PC, Mac, iOS, and Android programs.

All in all, great news for fans of the Kindle outside the US.  Who hasn’t heard of the complications facing people who try to import their eReader into an unsupported area, right?  The only people who are going to end up with real problems are those who wanted one badly enough to go out of their way and grab a US release.  These “early adopters” are likely to find themselves in the unpleasant position of having to choose between the books they have already acquired through Amazon and the benefits provided by the new store. As many UK customers can attest, digital rights management in an international environment can create problems from differing availability and pricing to seemingly arbitrary exclusivity issues.  It is to be hoped that the worst of this will be avoided in this case since the Amazon.de Kindle Store is catering more specifically to German-language eBook options than the US store has so far and as such will experience minimal overlap, so maybe this won’t be quite as noticeable as the US/UK divide seems to be?

The question this inevitably seems to lead to is whether or not this sort of thing will lead to a true localization of hardware to go along with the international store presence. At the moment German customers will still receive Kindles with English keyboards and interfaces, and the same sort of issue seems to be present in the menus for the app selection as well.  Whether the Kindle line makes the move to Android, as many have thought likely, or they simply keep going on the existing modified Linux build, it would seem to be both fairly simple and a good idea to make the software as accessible to everybody as possible.  That just leaves modifying the keyboard which would, admittedly, likely cause problems with the whole form factor production. A great deal seems like it depends on the success of this and other new stores.

We all remember the controversy surrounding the removal of a somewhat disturbing manual for pedophiles in the Kindle Store a while back.  As much as I dislike censorship, you can’t really deny that that’s the sort of thing you don’t want getting associated with your brand name, so let’s call that a questionable but probably smart decision on the part of Amazon(NASDAQ:AMZN).  More recent controversy about removal of eBooks has come from a production from Thomas Hertog.

Hertog’s publication, The Day The Kindle Died, is a detailed account of the way he scammed the Kindle Top 100 list through manipulation of ratings and reviews.  According to his story, it took only about 45 days to get his earlier work, Wealth Hazards, to the top of the list of Personal Finance eBooks using scammed reviews and up-voting these reviews on a daily basis.  The point that the author seems to be trying to make is that since the “bestsellers” list is not entirely based on daily sales numbers, it is useless and therefore Kindle purchases are somehow wrong.  It’s an interestingly flawed position to be taking.

What brought this to our attention was not the fact that the author is the sort of person who would go out of his way to undermine the ratings system, but rather that Amazon temporarily removed both publications from their site while investigating what was going on.  It was a fairly unique situation, but this is still odd behavior even if both books have been restored to the marketplace(minus their fraudulent statistics, of course). Basically, the guy pointed out that the system could be manipulated, proved it, and then people were surprised when Amazon corrects the mistake after he makes his point.  I may be in the minority, but censorship as a concern doesn’t seem like it applies here.

Now, does he have a point about the value of the way the store ratings work?  Yes, and no.  Sales numbers are not the only way that eBooks, or even other items, seem to be able to make it to the Top 100 list.  When people are used to the idea of a bestseller’s list as an indication of the relative success, popularity, and reliability of a product, it can be a bit of a shock for some people to realize that there is another way to go with it.

This isn’t a bad thing, and it certainly doesn’t indicate the downfall of the Kindle Store or Amazon in general, it’s just a little bit unintuitive.  Overall, if you’re going to be looking for the most interesting instances of a certain type of book, you’re probably going to want the one that the most people are finding worthy of comment, right?  It might all be subjective, but that’s better than just sales numbers when you’re trying to figure out if a book is worth a download.  This could force Amazon to change their algorithm, but much more likely things will continue on just like they have been and we can hope that they’ll find people trying to screw with Kindle book numbers using these techniques more easily having a record of how it was done once before.

For one reason or another, Amazon has knocked down subscription price for BlogKindle.com to 0.99/month from $1.99. Same thing has recently happened to iReaderReview.com. Either it’s some global policy change or blogs are evaluated on a regular basis and both blogs fell into the same pricing bucket. Even paying 12 cents per megabyte, Amazon would still make some profit since my blog would generate only 1 MB of compressed content per month at best.

Today Amazon has released 1.1 update for the iPhone Kindle Application. There are several new features and they are all good:

• Landscape reading is now supported. All you need to do is tilt your iPhone. If you don’t want orientation to change automatically – just tap the lock icon in the corner and autorotate will be off.

Kindle iPhone Landscape Reading

• 3 different color schemes are now supported to make reading on iPhone’s back-lit screen a bit easier on the eyes: original black-on-white, white-on-black and sepia that looks like an old book

Kindle For iPhone Color Schemes

• Images can now be zoomed and panned using iPhone’s multi-touch interface.

Kindle For iPhone Image Zoom

• Amazon has launched iPhone-optimized version of Kindle Store and integrated it into the app so now journey from Kindle for iPhone to Amazon.com and back again is comfortable and streamlined. It starts with pressing “Get Books” button in application home screen and ends back in the application with the book already downloaded. The only problem I noticed is that buttons on the website were very slow to respond to my taps. Could be just quirks of my particular iPhone or Internet connection.

iPhone Kindle Store

It looks like Amazon is taking eBooks on iPhone market quite seriously. They are also trying to lock in as many customers as possible while there are still relatively few eBook readers on the market.

If you already have the app installed – you just need to update it via the app store, if you don’t – you can install it there for Free.

Of course same application would also run on iPod Touch.

BlogKindle.com is now available as subscription and can be wirelessly delivered directly to your Kindle along with 4,400+ other blogs currently in the blog section of Kindle Store. Since Amazon recently simplified the process of self-publishing blogs on Kindle Store the amount of blogs skyrocketed from 1,400 to 4,400 in just a few days.

Amazon itself decides what the subscription price is going to be. Publishers have no control over it other than pulling their blog from the store completely. Currently BlogKindle.com is valued at $1.99/month.

I don’t believe that in my case 30% commission will make me a fortune. I mostly did it to get extra exposure for the blog. Kindle Marketplace seems to be a very logical place to have Kindle related blog. Of course the blog will still be available as it is now so you can read it in any browser or RSS reader of your choice.

Enjoy and stay tuned!

That’s the number of ebooks now available in Kindle format from the Amazon Kindle store! sweet! It was great to see the number surpass 100,000 this month, next target 1,000,000!

It’s wonderful too see the variety of ebooks being sold, it’s not surprising to see that Non-fiction ebooks are the favourite amongst Kindle owners at 64,432, followed by fiction at 35,522.

Other popular categories include; Science (18,134), Business & Investing (10,812), Computers & Internet (5,487), Advice & How-to (5,027) and Romance at 5,948 e-books. Curiously the Sports and Travel categories have the least amount of ebooks with 816 and 728 respectively.

Sitting proudly at number 1 is A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle which is a bargain at $7.44 reduced from the print list price of $14.