Kindle breaks Amazon sales records

Amazon.com has announced that December has been the best month for sales of its Kindle electronic book reader.

The company did not provide any sales figures or comparisons for its Kindle, but did say it is the most wished for, and most gifted item across all of Amazon.

Amazon said it is now offering free two-day expedited shipping for the Kindle between now and December 22, with shipping for delivery on or before December 24. Amazon's chief rivals in the electronic reader market, Sony and Barnes & Noble have not been able to deliver their products in time for the holidays.

Scribd for Amazon Kindle?

Scribd, the YouTube for print, is working on a new way to get e-books onto your Kindle without buying them from Amazon.

This week Scribd announced that John Wiley and Sons would be selling books through Scribd's store.That gives Scribd access to the "For Dummies" series, as well as "Frommer's" travel guides. It already had Simon and Schuster on board, along with other prominent publishers.

If Scribd can put its books on the Kindle, this number should only grow, especially since it offers publishers a better business deal than Amazon.

Amazon reportedly offers a 50/50 sales split. Scribd only keeps 20% and allows publishers to set their own price.

Christmas gift guide Amazon Kindle

Widely quoted as "the iPod of ebook readers". No big technology leaps here, but what makes this different is that this deviced is linked to a well-stocked store and providing a simple and streamlined consumer experience. Search for a title, author or subject. Within minutes, you’ve made a selection and are reading the first chapter or three for free. Minutes after you decide that you like what you’ve seen, you’ve got the whole book.
Free-for-life 3G connection to the AT&T mobile broadband network and Amazon throws in a web browser. 
The Kindle 2 is thin, light, and comfortable to hold, with big page-turn buttons that support right-handed or left-handed reading.


Amazon still  typically charge less than the competition.

Kindles don’t support ePub. But look out -  the Kindle 2 didn’t support PDF files until Amazon “pushed” that feature to the device wirelessly via a free software update.

Christmas gift guide iPod Touch

 Although it  isn’t a dedicated ebook reader there are multiple ebook reader apps for the iPod Touch. Including ones that can purchase and read books from the Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and eReader.com online stores. You can also read ePub content from every popular source, and there are plenty of apps for the iPod Touch that can slurp down any webpage you’re viewing in your desktop browser or any document on your desktop and convert them into ebooks. There are even apps for downloading and reading comic books. And support for Adobe’s Portable Document Format is baked right into the operating system.

However an iPod Touch is far more power-hungry than a conventional ebook reader. You can expect to get several hours of use between charges, as opposed to more than a week on a conventional reader and that display too small for reading text?

Christmas gift guide Sony Reader Pocket Edition

Sony's reader is supplied in a wide range of sizes, they all support the ePub file format (the most important format for both free and commercial ebooks) and Adobe Digital Editions DRM (the most platform-agnostic standard for selling copy-protected commercial content), and it’s easy to move files onto the device. The Pocket Edition is one of the standouts. It is slightly cheaper than the competition. More significantly, it’s a very convenient size. It’s as big as an ebook reader can possibly be and still fit in a shirt pocket; nearly all other readers are about the size of a hardcover.

Kindle to go lightweight

Prime View International, a Taiwanese company that is the biggest supplier of the screens used in e-readers - and which are currently based on glass - intends to introduce a plastic-based screen in the spring that it would make available to all its customers including Amazon

The lightweight plastic screen is expected to make the products less likely to break and pave the way for their large-scale introduction in schools and colleges.

Wall Street Journal deals with Sony Reader

Wall Street Journal announced an exclusive deal with Sony, Amazon’s top rival in the e-reader business.

Sony’s Daily Edition device will be the first to receive automatic wireless updates of The Wall Street Journal, New York Post, and the MarketWatch Web site.

The Journal available for $15 per month on the Kindle, and Amazon's Kindle does provide daily wireless updates to subscribers of WSJ and other newspapers each morning, and users do not have to manually download that content each morning as this post previously indicated. The ability to update the device with news and analysis after market close is what is being offered exclusively, as is the New York Post.