The increase appears to be partially fueled by the recent significant price reduction in the Kindle Readers, whose sales tripled since the price break.

For writers, this development simply adds to the message that ANY ONE can get published and gain access to a large market.  The key is marketing, making potential readers aware that one’s book is worth a look.

Again, I point blog readers to subscribe to Social Media Examiner, which has emerged has the best resource for ideas about harnessing the social media to build one’s fan base.

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• Kindle Books Outselling Hardcovers on Amazon by 43% (fastcompany.com)
• Amazon: Kindle Books Now Outselling Hardcovers (mashable.com)
• Amazon sells more Kindle books than hardcovers (money.cnn.com)
• Amazon: Kindle titles outpacing hardcovers (news.cnet.com)
• Amazon Says E-Books Now Top Hardcover Sales (nytimes.com)

By the way, did you know that one week ago, Amazon made available to the public a FREE downloadable reader for Kindle books on one’s PC.  One can now read Kindle titles without having to purchase the expensive reader.

As you already know, if you follow this blog, the Kindle Reader has gone international, with its e-book readers to be available in many countries.  There was a hitch with Canada, however.  This problem has been resolved, as explained in a post on the Publisher’s Weekly daily blog.

Smashwords has also announced with the past few days distribution arrangements with two major international ebook distributors.  Read the announcement about arrangements with Shortcovers, a major online distributor.  We’ve already announced the acquisition of BookHabit by Smashwords, but here’s a full announcement of this development.

LATEST NEWS ABOUT BARNES AND NOBLE’S NOOK READER: Barnes and Noble has just announced that its new Nook e-book reader has already sold out, within days of its introduction.  The company is now taking pre-orders for delivery in January.

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FREE E-BOOKS ON BLOGGING

Cook Tips and Tricks has rounded up an incredible list of 26 free e-books about blogging.  This is an invaluable list for anyone who blogs, or who is about to do so.  I particuarly draw your attention to The New Rules of Viral Marketing, which has been downloaded over 400,000 times within a year.  Not only is the advice eye-opening, the design is pacesetting:  this PDF e-book is laid out in “landscape” format, eliminating the annoying scrolling necessary in most PDF books.  By all means, take a look.

CALIBRE:  E-BOOK MANAGEMENT

Ok, so you’ve now downloaded lots of e-books.  How do you manage them?  With free, open-source Calibre.

CNET’s Download.com provides a quick, but helpful review and endorsement.  It also points out its biggest flaw:  while the program is genuinely cross-platform, supporting most of the different e-book platofmrs and readers, Calibre currently chokes on Sony’s E-Reader.  That’s a drawback that will probably be fixed.

On the strength of CNET’s endorsement, I downloaded it.  I’m very impressed.  It does a number of things:

• Library management

• Format conversion

• Syncing to E-Reader Devices [with Sony's E-Reader the one problem device]

• Fetching news: Calibre’s website explains that it :can automatically fetch news from a number of websites/RSS feeds, format the news into a ebook and upload to a connected device. At the moment there is support for generating LRF/EPUB ebooks.”  Currently supported are the New York Times, BBC, The Economist, Newsweek, Wall Street Journal, ESPN and others.  The program fetches full articles and displays them in “periodical” style.

• E-Book Viewer: If you don’t own one of the expensive e-book hardware devices, you can still view the e-books on your computer.  The program has versions compatible with Windows, Mac and Linux.

Are you ready to have your socks knocked off?  Take a look at some SCREENSHOTS.

FUJITSU RELEASES FIRST COLOR E-BOOK READER

Publisher’s Weekly has just announced in its daily email newsletter that Fujitsu has released the first color e-book reader that is commercially available.   it carries the odd name of FLEPia.   Currently, it’s for sale only in Japan, but Fujitsu expects to begin shipping to the US in the fall.  The design is sleek, and, like the Kindle, it can connect to the internet.  Information in English is still sketchy.  I’m not sure, for example, whether this reader requires its own e-book format.  I have  tracked down a video that shows the reader in action.  The video is oddly without sound.  You can see it in our VIDEO FOR WRITERS sidebar for the next few days, or at the VIDEO FOR WRITERS website.

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I was planning to move on beyond Kindle and iPhone talk today and to tackle how writers can conveniently publish their work in the new electronic formats.  However, Dan Costa of PC Magazine online has just written a column that fits right into what I’ve been saying and serves as a useful bridge between my topics.  Titled Amazon’s Kindle Secret is in the Software, Dan underscores the sudden breakthrough nature of what’s going on.  Exciting as the hardware is, it’s the software that should excite writers.  We now have an extraordinary new route to publication, with potentially millions of readers.  Dan’s article is important.  Please READ IT.

POST SCRIPT:  There’s more.  You do know, don’t you, that PC Magazine is no longer available in a print edition?  The magazine has abandoned print and is now available only in an electronic edition.  You can read magazine articles in piece-meal fashion at the PC Magazine website.  OR you can subscribe to a full electronic issue available online via Zinio.

You should also visit Zinio for a couple more surprises.  Scroll down to the bottom of the page, and on the left, you will see two significant links.  Digital Classics takes you to a bookshelf of over 100 “leather” bound classics.  Click on a book spine, fill in the user info, and look at the beautifully rendered e-Books, with an eye-popping page-turning feature.  From this site, you can also browse textbooks and magazines.  And Zinio is beginning to build up its digital bookstore as well.  The iPhone link takes you to Zinio’s “mobile newsstand,” still in incubation stage.

While preparing the post, I also did additional poking around at the PC Magazine website and came up with another article worth reading:  Six Alternatives to the Amazon Kindle 2.

PC Magazine also reported last week that magazine and newspaper publisher Hearst is developing an e-reader especially for periodicals.

Finally, you may recall my post several weeks ago announcing my subscription to the PC Utilities electronic edition, via Exact Editions in England.  In fact, earlier today, I read through the new issue.

EVEN MORE:  Another breaking news story, just released today by Publisher’s Weekly.  Barnes & Noble has bought the major e-book retail outlet Fictionwise, and its related reader E-Book Reader.  Barnes & Noble says that Fictionwise will become a major part of its strategy as it moves into the future.  You can read the Publisher’s Weekly article HERE.  I’ll have more to say about Fictionwise next week, with a post I’ve already been planning.  I’m amazed at how fast the new developments are moving, just as I start to write this series.

QUESTION:  What do you make of all this activity?  Please share your thoughts in the comment section below.

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You can get more information at the New York Times website.  Indicating the popular interest in this new facility, this article is the 8th most emailed story of the day.

There is even speculation that Apple may itself come out with a larger sized iPod Touch, which will make reading even easier.

Also underscoring rising consumer interest in the Kindle, papers yesterday carried a story indicating that Stephen King’s new novella UR, released only for the Kindle three weeks ago as part of Amazon’s promotion of the new Kindle 2, already has sales in the 5 figures.

But there’s still more in the pipeline.

Plastic Logic unveiled its 8 1/2 x 11 inch e-Reader last September, with indications that the product will hit the stores sometime in 2009.  This is the Reader I’m personally waiting for.  It will also be ideal for magazines and newspapers, as well as trade books with illustrations.  I have collected two video demos in VIDEO FOR WRITERS, one in low-resolution that streams conveniently, the other in high-definition by the Plastic Logic CEO.  Both will be available in the sidebar for a few days.

Some critics of e-Books claim that they will not be satisfied until readers with full-color capability come along.  That’s in the pipeline too.  Just look at the demo video of the Sony Full-Color Paper, also in the sidebar and at VIDEO FOR WRITERS.

As more readers turn to e-Books, as they certainly will, writers will surely benefit.  Wny?  Because getting one’s work into e-Book format is becoming much easier — and at little or no cost.  I’ll discuss this further later this week.

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• Amazon Releases Software For Reading Books on iPhone (shoppingblog.com)

In further proof that the digital e-book is coming of age, the New York Times today published an online article about the surge in e-Readers since Oprah Winfrey’s endorsement of Amazon’s Kindle.

The Times notes that several top-drawer novels are getting in line with Kindle editions of their works.  The article also reviews the current state of various hardware e-readers and looks ahead to anticpated developments next year.  The article also notes that some distributors are now making short stories available in e-book format, a development that make breathe new life into the genre.

Meanwhile, some readers are now turning to their iPhone for reading material, now that there are software applications available.  The Christian Science Monitor, for example, reviews a new application for the iPhone called Iceberg, which debuts on the market today.  There are already 200 titles available and many more coming.  Wired Magazine provides more details.

There’s no doubt about it:  the e-book is continuing to advance.  Writers take note.

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