If you’ve picked up a Kindle since the price plummeted to a mere $79- cheaper than many pairs of jeans on Amazon- you probably ticked off the imagined savings in your head, switching from expensive-to-produce paper versions to cheaper digitally created and distributed texts.

After all, there’s no printing cost, no expenses from shipping to the seller, no allocation of warehouse space to house physical copies of the book you’ve just bought. But you may have noticed that in-demand e-book titles often command a price in line with that of their dead tree counterparts, hovering around the exact same price point if not in some cases inexplicably costing more than a version that cost the publisher money for paper, glossy covers, and freight. And then you get hooked on the slim lines, the easy to use interface, the ability to carry hundreds of books in your purse- and you’re stuck paying jacked up prices and it sucks.

The Wall Street Journal brought the issue to light this week with a piece about price collusion amid publishers, sparking debate over fair pricing of ebooks. The paper confirms that the Justice Department is looking into whether the actions of publishers to keep the prices on par with those of printed tomes falls afoul of laws preventing such agreements:

The Justice Department confirmed last week that it was investigating whether there was improper collusion between the publishers and Apple to prevent discounting. Publishers last week either disagreed with the allegations, said they were cooperating with regulators or declined to comment. Random House said it isn’t part of the probe and otherwise declined to comment. Apple declined to comment at the time.

Do you find ebooks to be creeping ever steadily upward in price?

E-Readers Are Cheap Now, But Are Ebook Prices Skyrocketing? is a post from: The Inquisitr

The times, as a certain B. Dylan once said, are a-changin’. The Brumback Library, the very first county library formed in the United States, is now expanding its services to include eBooks, audiobooks, digital music and digital video.

Patrons of the Brumback may now browse the Ohio eBook Project website, check out any materials with a valid library card, and download their content to a PC, Mac, or other mobile devices. Apple, Android, Blackberry, Kindle, Nook, Sony Reader, and Windows devices are all supported. Sure, it’s not the same as thumbing through worn, well-loved vintage Penguin paperbacks, but this is progress, people.

The Brumback Library has five branches located across Ohio, and is described on its official site as “an outstanding example of great foresight and philanthropy, a true cultural legacy.” The first branch was opened on January 1, 1901, and has over 181,000 items covering every imaginable topic and genre – the library’s are also renowned for their excellent Children’s Department.

I guess the Brumback’s adoption of digital media is a sign of how libraries must change to survive. The rise of the Ebook means widespread library closures have been taking place across the United States (and here in the UK also) for a few years now – a crying shame for fans of these unique, charmingly old-fashioned places.

So bravo to you, Brumback. May you still be open another 110 years from now, zapping holographic books and video straight into our Matrix-style brain jacks.

Brumback Library, First County Library in U.S., Now Doing Ebooks, Digital Music and Video is a post from: The Inquisitr

One of the more common and baffling complaints about electronic reading devices is that they don’t feel as ‘warm’ as real books or newspapers, or that the ‘book smell’ is absent.

A lifelong book-devourer and compulsive reader, I can honestly say that these aesthetic concerns never entered into my decision to switch over to electronic-only reading materials. But again and again, I encounter this idea- that book smell is somehow going to keep the tradition of printing on paper alive. Because horse smell did so much to keep humanity from adopting cars.

Anyway. Consumerist covered a new candle that is meant to replicate the smell of books, so when you’re reading your Kindle you don’t feel like that much of a culture-killing jerk:

Various Projects and Josée Lepage of Bondtoo were close collaborators and friends of [Tobias] Wong’s. We have realized his Times of New York candle in a limited edition of 1000.

The scent of the candle is newsy, with hints of guaiacwood, cedar, musk, and spice. Characterized by “a powdery note and velvet nuance,” the scent is meant to mimic the aroma of black ink on newsprint.

The candles, designed by the late Tobias Wong, are available for a mere $65 from this site.

New Candle Replicates ‘Print’ Smell For E-Ink Users is a post from: The Inquisitr

Just a few months after they got their own New York Times Bestseller list, electronic books hit another acceptance milestone- they’ve outpaced paperbacks as the single bestselling format in the US.

The sales stats turned in favor of electronic books earlier this year, with paperbacks outselling them in January. By February, ebooks took the top spot:

The Association of American Publishers revealed in their latest report, which compiled sales data from US publishing houses, that total ebook sales in February were $90.3m (£55.2m). The AAP said this report makes digital books the largest single format in the US for the first time ever, overtaking paperbacks at $81.2m. Paperbacks led up until January, with ebooks coming second.

Adult hardback and paperbacks plummeted 34.4% in February, compared with sales growth of 202.3% for their electronic counterparts in the same period. Deputy editor of The Bookseller Philip Jones commented on sales projections for the format:

“Ebooks have grown massively, but they do not yet match overall print books and nor is it predicted that they will. The most bullish predictions suggest that ebooks will account for 50 per cent of the US market by 2014 or 2015, and then will probably plateau.”

The AAP credits an influx of Christmas-gifted readers as well as broader offerings in the market for the recent jump in e-book sales.

E-books outpace paperbacks in February sales is a post from: The Inquisitr

Google Books for iOS devices received an update today and with the new version comes the ability to view books in iPad landscape viewing mode.

The optimized iPad output allows users to view two pages at a time, while providing a better search function that reveals all matches as the user scrolls down the page.

Also included with the update is the ability to use your Google Books username to sign into Google eBookstore by tapping “Get eBooks” from inside the application.

The program also adds a 3D page turning effect on the iPad iOS 4.3 version and minor bug fixes have also been addressed which has helped the application run faster.

You can get the new version of the application in the Apple App Store immediately.

Google Books App For iOS Gets Upgraded, iPad Landscape Mode Supported is a post from: The Inquisitr

Well, this kind of feels like a bit of a pivotal moment for e-books- the most nationally referenced best-seller list is getting an e-book list, too.

The New York Times, whose best-seller list is often used as a reference point for an author or work’s legitimacy or success (the Times itself modestly refers to its own list as the “industry standard”), has been ranking best-selling books since 1935. Janet Elder, the gray lady’s editor of news surveys and election analysis, said the e-book best-seller ranking was a long time in the works:

“We’ve had our eye on e-book sales since e-books began,” Ms. Elder said. “It was clear that e-books were taking a greater and greater share of total sales, and we wanted to be able to tell our readers which titles were selling and how they fit together with print sales.”

It’s probably about damn time the NYT began ranking e-books, which according to Mashable are expected to top a billion dollars in sales this year. One of the nation’s top booksellers, Amazon, said earlier this year that e-book sales have outpaced hardcover books, and that they’re expected to outsell paperbacks by the end of 2011.

‘New York Times’ to add e-book best-seller list is a post from: The Inquisitr

It looks like the book hugging crowd might have to come to terms with a decidedly looming digital future: Amazon announced Monday that e-book sales have outstripped those of their paper and cover counterparts for three months running, and dramatically.

For every 100 books made from dead trees that Amazon moved, 143 digital books were cleanly and neatly downloaded to Kindles, iPhones, PCs, Macs, BlackBerrys and Androids. While all those paper books had to be physically processed and wrapped in more bad for the environment waste type things, the digital copies were beamed almost instantaneously to e-readers and enabled devices. No trees were harmed, no gas-guzzling trips to the shops were made and no plastic bags nor receipts joined the transaction.

If you’re still stuck on the (let’s face it, rather musty and unpleasant) smell of books, or the tactile sensation of rubbing your fingers over a page countless people have pored over while on the john, your days of physical book reading are probably ever dwindling. (Although, for those who have embraced e-books, the lamentations regarding the difference in media are sure to continue for decades at least and are just gaining steam.)

Mike Shatzkin spoke to the Times about the coming shift toward an e-book dominated publishing industry and said that Kindle held up well against iPad because users she the devices as complimentary, not mutually exclusive. Combined with flood of content for the books and price wars on devices, Amazon’s got a fairly strong grip on the e-book market:

One reason Kindle book sales have held their own is that owners of iPads and other mobile reading devices buy Kindle books, which they can read on computers, iPhones, iPads, BlackBerrys and Android phones. But, except for the free uncopyrighted books, Kindle owners must buy or download content via Amazon. “Every time they sell a Kindle, they lock up a customer,” Mr. Shatzkin said.

Analysts say they believe that the news from Amazon could improve performance of Amazon’s stock (-16% in the past three months) due to fears the iPad would dent sales.

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Tipping point: Amazon announces that e-book sales have outstripped book books for 3 months straight is a post from: The Inquisitr

Amazon on Wednesday night rolled out the Kindle 2.5 update, an option which provides Kindle users with new social networking capabilities. The update, which includes Facebook and Twitter options allows users to highlight sections of their books and then send those highlighted areas as updates to their chosen accounts.

The update also provides a password lock option, larger and sharper fonts and the ability to zoom into and pan PDFs when text is too small. Another new feature with “Collections” allows users to sort both books and carried-over documents into groups.

The update is available on second-generation Kindle’s and is being pushed out automatically. [Electronista]

If you’ve received the update let us know what you think about it.

Amazon Rolls Out Kindle Update, Brings Twitter And Facebook Capabilities is a post from: The Inquisitr

The iPad sold 300,000 units on opening day and 7.5% of those buyers told Gene Munster of Piper Jaffray that they were making the jump away from their Amazon Kindle devices.

The numbers above were reached based on 448 interviews conducted at the Apple stores in New York City and Minneapolis. According to the survey 13 percent of those people interviewed said they owned an Amazon Kindle, while 7.5% said they would be completely replacing their Kindle with the iPad.

According to Electronista:

Planned usage habits also hinted that at least some iPad buyers, including those new to e-readers, would be considered lost sales for Amazon. About 38 percent plan to read books; most, 74 percent, plan to view the web. E-mail and video are nearly even at 32 and 26 percent, but gaming and music were only 18 and 8 percent of the mix.

That same survey points to 74 percent of those buyers already owning a Mac, with 66 percent carrying around an iPhone.

If Amazon and their Kindle line has anything going for them it’s the $259 price tag that’s nearly half the cost of the $499 Apple Tablet.

7.5% Of iPad Users Jumping Ship Away From Amazon Kindle is a post from: The Inquisitr

We totally understand that children love their pop-up books, but is it really necessary for our e-Books to go the way of Hollywood movies? According to Gizmodo that’s the plan and it could be arriving sooner rather than later.

3D e-Books will work much in the same fashion as 3D movies, by requiring special glasses. At this point South Korean scientists have developed books that require users to tilt the books in order to operate properly, which is rather quite annoying.

Kim Sang-cheol of  South Korea’s Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology  says that “it will take a while to market this technology to the general public.” If their technology doesn’t end up on e-Books it could still find use in medical equipment and on various Smartphone and Tablet devices. [Reuters]

3D Ebooks Could Arrives In A Few Years…Give Us A Break! is a post from: The Inquisitr

If you’re excited about the Apple Tablet because you want to ditch your Kindle and carry around an all in one tablet/ebook/Iphone OS based device, you’ll probably be  interested to know that books are rumored to be suggested for release at less than premium pricing.

How less than premium? According to the Wall Street Journal, hardcover bestsellers will come in from $12.99 to $14.99, with a few titles offered lower at $9.99.

According to their report, the publications in question, at least at this point, specifically involve HarperCollins books. Also according to the report, Apple will take a 30% cut, leaving approximately $10.49 per book for the publisher.

If the price rumors do indeed turn out to be true, it would put a premium price on Apple’s offerings when compared to Amazon and Nook offered ebooks. The real question then is, will they let users import books bought from other stores, or just stick it to their tablet users.

There is a few things to keep in mind, while those prices are sought by Apple, they will apparently let publishers set their own pricing, just like they do in their Apple Apps store, with Apple taking their 30% cut regardless of pricing. They may also get around “digital delayed copies” with their pricing structure which would bring top books to their platform more quickly.

Hopefully in 24 hours the hype will finally come to the foreground and we’ll get answers to this rumor and the several dozen others we’ve experienced over the last several months. [The Wall Street Journal]

Apple Tablet Suggests $15 Hardcover Best Sellers Via E-book [Rumor] is a post from: The Inquisitr

The BeBook Neo E-Reader is officially ready for orders and offers a bunch of useful features for eBook fans including WiFi and WACOM capabilities.

The Neo also offers 512MB internal storage and comes with a 3.5mm headphone jack and an SD expansion slot. The unit also features a portable, yet readable 6 inch Vizplex display (800 x 600) with a 532MHz Freescale CPU for snappy loadtimes and online capabilities.

The unit also offers a USB 2.0 connection and supports a wide array of file types that include ePUB, PDF, HTML, JPG, PNG and various others.

BeBook also claims 7,000 page turns on a full charge, plenty of time to get in all your reading while sitting on the beach for vacation. Plus BeBook has built the Neo to support various third-party ebook sites, allowing for better access to more material.

Finally, WACOM allows users to annotate text and add text mark-ups much easier than other ebooks. BeBook is also  promising software updates in the near future. If you simply have to have one, the pre-order price is $299. [HotHardware]

BeBook Neo E-Reader Offers Pre-Orders, Features WiFi And WACOM is a post from: The Inquisitr

The Wall Street Journal today is reporting that publishing company HarperCollins and “soon to be tablet retailer” Apple are in talks to sell e-books on the Apple tablet upon it’s release.

WSJ also states that other book publishers have recently been in talks with Apple and that those announcements may also be revealed during Apple’s special January 27th event which is expected to bring about the reveal of the Apple Tablet.

If the rumors are true it could create a big headache for the red hot Ereader market, specifically big manufacturers that include Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Just a few more weeks and we should have the specifics.

Apple Tablet Rumor Mill: HarperCollins and Apple Negotiating eBook Deal is a post from: The Inquisitr

It was only a matter of time before eBook readers, known as eReaders began to resemble tablet PC’s and Netbooks and with the announcement of the Creative Zii MediaBook that’s exactly what we’re getting.

According to Creative the MediaBook will features a touchscreen with full color outputs, allow users to browse the web and provide Twitter and Facebook access directly from the devices display.

MediaBook users will also be able to enjoy movies and music on their device, look at photos and even expand their devices memory by utilizing an included SD card slot.

The Creative Zii is also going to provide text-to-speech capabilities and provide information from content providers such as newspapers, magazines and other non-traditional media outlets.

No word yet on a possible release date, pricing or any other major components that the devices may possess. We’ll keep you posted.

Creative Reveals Plans For Zii MediaBook is a post from: The Inquisitr

The folks at Amazon could be getting a little nervous with the new found realization that Barnes and Noble will release their “Nook” E-reader in November. Currently the company is featuring the Kindle with International Wireless smack dab in the middle of their homepage.

The International version of the Kindle was released in the past week and features access to downloadable 3G speeds in over 100 countries including the U.S. with no additional fees or contracts to worry about.  The International unit also comes in at a respectable 1/3 inches in thickness (approx.) and holds up to 1,500 books at one time.

Users can pick up the readers in two sizes, 6″ diagonal E Ink® display which offers International Wireless capabilities for $259.00 and a 9″ diagonal E Ink® screens with the later increasing book storage size to 3,500 books but only currently offered for U.S. downloads and priced significantly higher at $489.00

While both options are featured on the product page, it’s the international wireless option that’s prominently mentioned on the home page.

Barnes and Noble in the meantime will release the “Nook” E-reader in November while offering large discounts on Barnes and Noble published books that are downloaded directly to their device. Much like the Kindle the Nook will also feature” e-ink” type technology and will come equipped with a secondary screen in color which is housed on what I personally consider a much better looking overall design than the Kindle. The Nook also runs Google Android OS which has been largely hyped up over the last year.

This should be an interesting battle to witness…stay tuned.

Amazon Begins “International Kindle” Hype Machine, Ready To Square Off Against Barnes And Noble “Nook” Ereader is a post from: The Inquisitr

The latest Internet tech pundits’ obsession has not been related to the ADD-laced “real time web” proclamations that some are so annoyingly fond of, but of a much older format…

Books.

News has been slowly leaking out regarding Barnes & Noble’s “Nook” e-reader device, and the more that surfaces, the more it sounds like a surprising and wonderful device that could prove to be the harbinger of the e-reader’s/e-book’s watershed moment.  It’s based on the Android platform, has a substantially better feature set than any of its predecessors, holds comparatively extreme battery life, and implements what appears to be a slick user interface.

And it’s being produced and sold by a book retailer chain.

Until now, e-readers have been something of a pipedream, since Sony’s Reader has been a nonstarter and the Amazon Kindle is inherently flawed – but all of this may quickly change.  It’s intriguing that Barnes & Noble managed to understand the market’s needs so well, such as supporting a litany of formats and replicating real world book features like “sharing”, when this is something that Jeff Bezos (Amazon CEO) loves to claim as his own.  Amazon may have cornered the market in numerous areas by using their leverage to lower prices and make deals, but they failed in the areas of digital reader rights and the all-important digital discount.

If the statistics on wholesale book sales from the International Digital Publishing Forum, which are typically half those of retail, are to be believed, e-book sales have approximately tripled within the last twelve months – the data coincides with Amazon’s entrance into the market, as expected.  But with the debut of Barnes & Noble, one of two monolithic North American book retailers, as both a hardware and e-book retailer, these numbers will likely grow at an even faster rate.

Borders, Barnes & Noble’s only true competitor, has been weakly promoting the Sony Reader for years to very little effect – so what happens when one of the book giants has a product that it has invested substantial R&D in, and wants desperately to succeed?  It’s highly probable that the Nook will be prominently featured in all of B&N’s locations, with slick salesmen/promoters attached, and will remain a central focus of their website for all of the foreseeable future.

When a brick-and-mortar company puts their substantial sales/promotion weight behind a product, including their $4.5 billion from in-store sales (2008), they almost always have a noticeable effect on the targeted market.  Amazon is the king of product sales, but the sad fact is that a modern online powerhouse doesn’t have the marketing clout needed to push an unfamiliar item into the mainstream.  However, if B&N’s power is combined with the apparent greatness of the device, a breakthrough to the masses becomes possible.

If they play their cards right, Barnes & Noble may be remembered as the company that produced the first “next generation” e-reader that was close enough to perfect for it to be popular with mainstream consumers – Amazon, Sony, and a few others will have their place as innovators, but there will be a distinction between the two.  This innovation/breakthrough dichotomy is not uncommon, and can be easily found in the history of the Internet itself:  the companies that were innovators (and faded/failed/went bankrupt) versus those who were able to make mainstream breakthroughs.

All of this, of course, depends on the device being more-or-less as described, not to mention functional and without any major hardware or software bugs – their success is contingent upon getting this right the first time.  If they fail, they probably won’t have time for a second chance.

But I have my fingers crossed… And I already want one.

Kyle Brady is a contributing columnist for the Inquisitr, an entrepreneur, and has a future in science fiction.  He can be found at his blog, via email, or on Twitter.

The E-Reader’s Future is a post from: The Inquisitr

LG has just announced their newest e-Book reader, a 6-inch solar powered unit that features it’s own device sized solar panel.

The “Solar Cell e-Book” helps provide an extra boost to the units battery with as little as a 9.6 percent efficient solar charge.

LG is estimating up to an additional full day of reading capabilities if the unit is exposed to as little as four to five hours of sunlight.

The unit has no expected release date as it still sits in the “prototype” stages, however the paneled device is part of LG’s efforts to improve efficiency by 12 percent in 2010 and up to 14 percent by 2012. [Electronista]

LG Solar Powered Ebook Prototype Gets Revealed is a post from: The Inquisitr

With a market that requires very little resources to enter, Asus’ main goal will be establishing a loyal customer base and content delivery system for their eBook platform, which may be an easier process if they can convert some of their loyal EEE customers and deliver a quality eBook delivery system.

Mr. Shen also told Digitimes that the company will look to develop, market and launch the EEE-Book before the end of 2009, although that was his “early” release estimate.

We’ll post more information as it becomes available.

Asus Looking To Launch EEE-Book In 2009 is a post from: The Inquisitr

Personally I couldn’t give a rat’s ass about the Kindle as it is just another of the many US centric products on the market but I ran across a rather interesting stat concerning this e-book reader from Amazon. It would appear that approximately 70% of the people that have forked out the outrageous amount of money Amazon wants for the Kindle are 40 and over.

Granted it is an unscientific poll as the results were derived from someone pulling the numbers out of a comment thread of a previous post by Dave Carnoy at the Crave blog

Back in March, I did a post titled, "What’s the average age of Kindle owners?" I cited a thread in Amazon.com’s forums discussing Kindle owners’ ages.

Well, I have a little follow-up on the whole issue. Apparently, someone went ahead and tabulated 700 of the responses in that Amazon thread (that represents about 75 percent of all the posts) and broke out the numbers. Here they are:

• 0 – 19: 5%
• 20 – 29: 10%
• 30 – 39: 15%
• 40 – 49: 19.5%
• 50 – 59: 23%
• 60 – 69: 19.5%
• 70 – 79: 6%
• 80+: 2%

We can’t call this the most scientific poll ever taken, but it’s probably a good indicator of the Kindle’s age demographic. If you add it all up, over half the owners are over 50 and 70 percent are over 40.

His post did raise one point that I hadn’t honestly thought when it came to the popularity of the Kindle among older users. The fact that one can increase the font size and that for someone with arthritis the Kindle is a lot easier to hold for long periods of time than large books. That’s something I’ll have to keep in mind for my wife, who suffers badly from rheumatoid arthritis, if Amazon ever decides to let the rest of the world buy the damn thing.

An interesting Kindle stat is a post from: The Inquisitr

The newly launched Google Book Search for mobile is available for all iPhone and Android-based device users. All you have to do is navigate over to books.google.com/m, and you can browse through subjects or search for specific authors or titles. Already, more than 1.5 million books are available.

Google Book Search on the Web had been around for a while. The new thing here is really the formatting — the books are now optimized for smartphone reading. Google engineers explain what they had to do go through to make that happen in the official Google Book Search Blog, if you’re interested.

Sorry, Kindle, but with the introduction of this — not to mention the availability of relatively inexpensive mobile services like eReader and BookShelfLT — your market is suddenly looking a lot less bright.

Google Launches Free e-Book Reader is a post from: The Inquisitr