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E-book readers really grew in popularity during the course of 2009. The launch of Amazon’s Kindle 2.0 reader, as well as its larger sibling the Kindle DX, had a lot to do with this. The second half of the year saw competitors such as Sony and Barnes and Noble launch, or update, their own readers and both e-book readers and e-books became well established. By the beginning of 2010 potential buyers could choose from a large selection of e-book readers – including the Apple iPad.

Now that the “early adopters” have taken up e-book readers, the next batch of customers will come from more traditional bibliophiles. It’s possible to find many reviews of e-book readers on the Internet, but potential customers are probably more interested to know how e-book readers compare with “real” books rather than how they stack up against other e-book readers. They want to know whether or not they will miss the feel of a traditional paper book.

In fact, the e-ink display technology which is used in modern e-book readers is actually very good. It produces a reading experience which is nothing like reading on a computer screen – is much more akin to reading standard text printed on paper.

When you “turn the page” on an e-book reader, it goes dark very briefly. However, these page turns are much faster now than they were even twelve months ago. After a couple of reading sessions you won’t notice them at all. In fact, when you’re enjoying a good book, you will be completely unaware of the fact that you’re reading it on an electronic device rather than leafing through the pages of a more traditional paper edition.

E-book readers are also very simple and intuitive to use. A recent survey of US e-book reader owners found that 80% of them prefer to use their e-book reader instead of a real book. That’s a strong vote of confidence. Of course, when you consider how easy e-book readers are to use one-handed, riding on a crowded bus or train for example, it’s really no great surprise.

Apart from the benefits of the e-book readers themselves, the e-books used on them cost quite a bit less than traditional paper books. This is because they don’t need paper, ink or bindings. The delivery fees are also a fraction of what it would cost to deliver a physical book. E-books are also, for precisely the same reasons, kinder to the environment than conventional books – even taking the materials and energy used in the production and delivery of the hardware itself into account.

All things considered, e- books have a lot to recommend them. If you read a book a week or so, you may well find that the future of reading is quite a bit cheaper for you. When all is said and done, it is very much a matter of personal choice – but an e-book reader may well prove to be a good option for you.

Learn more about the Amazon Kindle for yourself and view the wide range of Kindle accessories available to help you personalise your reader.

The consumer market for e-book readers, and the e-books to read upon them, absolutely exploded in 2009. E-book readers have been around for over a decade. The Franklin eBookman was launched in 1999. The Sony PRS reader launched in 2006 and Amazon’s original Kindle reader launched in November of 2007.

However it was the launch of the upgraded Amazon Kindle 2.0 in February of 2009 that saw e-book reader sales skyrocket. The large format Kindle DX followed in the summer of 2009 and by the end of the year Sony had launched three new PRS readers and Barnes and noble had also entered the market with the release of the Nook reader.

The Kindle quickly became Amazon’s number one selling product and, over the Christmas period of 2009, became the “most gifted” ever Amazon product. In the meantime, even more e-book readers are being launched. In early 2010 Apple got in on the act when they unveiled their new iPad. Potential e-book reader customers were absolutely spoilt for choice.

The market had grown and developed at an extremely fast pace. Although the public became accustomed to e-book readers very quickly, some of the major publishing houses were finding it difficult to cope with the changes. Many of them were unhappy with the fact that inexpensive e-book versions are being made available immediately alongside the newly released hardback version of books.

The normal publishing cycle of hardback edition followed, usually some months later, by the paperback version has now been supplemented by the addition of the e-book version. There’s no reason to delay the release of this – and it would be inadvisable anyway, after all, e-book reader owners are likely to be avid readers and are therefore in the target demographic for new book releases. Of course, customers aren’t going to be willing to pay anywhere near to the same price for an e-book that they would for a hardback, or even paperback, edition. And why should they? There’s no paper, ink or bindings involved and the delivery charge for a downloadable e-book is a fraction of a fraction of the cost to deliver a physical book.

E-books have resulted in some fairly tense discussions between book retailers and big publishing houses. Amazon’s policy of pricing e-books at $ 9.99 or less even led to McMillan books being briefly removed from the Amazon site. As previously stated, e-book reader owners will be amongst the publishing houses best customers. Unless the big publishers adopt and adapt to the new technology and learn to use it to their advantage, they will lose out, lose customers and eventually become extinct.

Check out the Amazon Kindle reader for yourself – there are over 400,000 Kindle books to pick from.

The strategy adopted by Amazon of setting the price for Kindle books at $9.99 or lower has led to some tough discussions with many of the major publishing firms. Very recently, this even had the effect of causing books by the McMillan publishing house to be withdrawn from the Amazon website. The dust has settled and McMillan books are now being sold by Amazon again. The publishers may have managed to secure higher pricing for their books, for the moment at least, but they need to tread carefully and avoid upsetting customers.

The fact that the Kindle reader is now Amazon’s number one selling product is clear evidence of just how quickly the public have adopted e-book readers. Apart from the Amazon Kindle, there are now numerous alternative readers available from the likes of Sony, Barnes and Noble, Apple, Plastic Logic – the list goes on. The market may well be new, and in a developmental phase, but it is growing rapidly.

E-book reader owners may well be in the minority at the moment – and this is likely to be the case for some time to come – but they have already begun to form an extremely important market segment within the industry. Think about it – would you buy an e-book reader if you read a book a month? The owners of e-book readers get through a lot of books.

They are also likely to have a relatively high disposable income – or else why would they spend over $ 200 on what is after all a discretionary purchase? They are probably well educated – or at least well read – and they are quite likely to be aware of new trends and topical issues. In short, they are the target market for book publishers and booksellers.

They will certainly be aware that it costs much less to produce an e-book than it does to produce either a hardback or paperback book. They also know that e-books – even taking the materials used to produce the reader hardware itself into account – are much more environmentally friendly than paper books. They will probably enjoy the speed and simplicity with which they can purchase new books using the e-book reader. Some of them may even find themselves buying and reading more books than usual as a result of this. When they are enjoying a good book, they probably don’t even notice if they are using the Kindle reader, the Nook from Barnes and Noble or leafing through a leather bound first addition. It would be a major error if publishers or booksellers were to disregard these early adopters of e-book reader technology.

However, that may be just what many of these publishers are in danger of doing at the moment. Many of the major publishing houses are keen to defend the profits they make from the sale of hardback books. For this reason they have pressurised book retailers to fix the price of e-books higher than they might otherwise have wished. In the short term, this may prove to be a good strategy for protecting the publisher’s profits – but profits aside, there is very little apparent reason to take this step, something which must be blatantly obvious to many consumers.

Check out the Kindle reader and view the wide range of Kindle accessories available to help you customise and protect your reader.

The Amazon Kindle e-book reader has been a hugely successful product for Amazon. It was first released in November of 2007 – but it was the launch of the Kindle 2, in February 2009, which saw e-book readers really take off. Amazon followed up with the large display Kindle DX model in June of 2009 and the e-book reader market started to grow exponentially.

The Kindle quickly became Amazon’s best selling product. During the festive season of 2009 it became the “most gifted” Amazon product ever. Inevitably, a number of other manufacturers either launched, or updated, their own e-book readers. Increased competition drove prices down and provided customers with additional options – both of these are good things of course.

Faced with a wider variety of options, e-book reader customers now need some way to make comparisons between the different choices available. It’s certainly possible to find plenty of reviews on the Internet comparing different e-book reader hardware, the Kindle versus the Sony Daily Edition reader for example. However, comparing e-book readers simply in terms of the hardware is neglecting a lot of the e-book reader experience. Typically, as is often the case with electronic gadgets, the most recently released models will have some functions and features which are lacking in slightly older models. This is perfectly normal. What also needs to be taken into account, are factors such as legibility of the display, the layout of the controls, the ease of use, the number of available books, the cost of books, the ease of connection, the ease of purchasing books etc.

Some of these factors are subjective, but others can be analysed more precisely and incorporated into the decision-making process when deciding which e-book reader to buy. The Kindle reader certainly enjoys an advantage when it comes to the number of books available. At the moment the Amazon website has more than 420,000 titles on offer and that number is growing daily. It also seems that the Kindle has a significant advantage when it comes to the cost of books.

A recent study by the New York Times looked at the cost of ten books – the NYT’s nominated ten best books of 2009, five fiction and five non-fiction titles – on three different e-book readers, the Kindle, the Nook and the Sony reader. The ten Kindle books cost a total of $ 136.87 – an average of $ 13.69 per title. The same ten books bought from Sony’s store produced an average price of $ 15.26 and Barnes and Noble worked out at a staggering average price per book of $ 19.29.

So, based upon these figures, if you read a book a week you would be almost $ 300 a year better off buying a Kindle than a Nook. That would effectively mean that your Kindle reader would pay for itself, and then some, in less than 12 months. There are a lot of discussions going on between the major publishing houses and the e-book retailers right now, so e-book prices may well be subject to change in future. However, it seems clear that anyone considering buying an e-book reader would be well advised to take both the availability of books and their pricing into consideration before making a final decision.

Learn more about the Amazon Kindle – and have a look at the wide range of Kindle accessories available to help you both protect and personalise your reader.

There are many e-book reader reviews on the Internet right now. You can also find them in magazines and newspapers from time to time. This simply reflects the fact that e-book readers have really taken off – powered, to a large extent, by the release of the Amazon Kindle 2.0 in February of 2009. Today there is a wide variety of e-book readers to choose from and many people are looking for guidance to help them choose the right reader for them.

Many reviews, understandably perhaps, concentrate very strongly on the hardware – the size of the Kindle screen is this, the Sony Daily Edition screen size is that, this reader incorporates touch screen controls, that reader has a wireless connection etc. Which is fine, but if you’re looking for your first e-book reader then the chances are that you will be making a mental comparison between e-books and conventional books rather than between different types of e-book reader.

Firstly, to put your mind at rest, a recently conducted survey of American e-book reader owners found that 80% of them prefer to use their e-book reader rather than to read a traditional book. Based on that type of feedback it doesn’t look as if those who have changed from paper to electronic books are missing the feel of a real book too much. It appears as if manhandling large, paper books is not an attractive prospect for those who already have experience of e-book readers.

The display is one of the key things that you should consider when selecting your e-book reader. Assuming that the main purpose of your e-book reader is to read books, as opposed to surfing the web or watching video, you will certainly want to go for a reader which has an e-ink technology display. These really are very much like reading normal text printed on normal paper – much more so than reading on a backlit computer screen. They also require very much less power and this means you can go for a long time between charges. When you turn the page, the screen will flicker and go black very briefly. This is not a big problem. In the beginning you will notice it because it is something new but, after just a couple of reading sessions, you will be completely unaware of it.

Another important factor to consider is the controls and the ease of use. The controls of the Amazon Kindle for example, are well laid out and easy to use. It’s very easy to operate the Kindle using only one hand, which makes it ideal if you’re sitting propped up in bed or on a crowded train or bus. The Sony reader has touch screen controls – but this comes at the expense of a slightly poorer display as current touch screen technology is not completely transparent and also requires a slightly more reflective screen.

Finally, do not make the mistake of thinking that e-book prices are the same for different readers. A recent survey carried out by the New York Times showed that there were some very significant differences in the price of e-books for different readers. In some cases the difference was so large that someone who reads a book a week could save $300 a year – enough to pay for the e-book reader in other words. Book pricing is very volatile – so be sure to check on the price of e-books for the reader that you are considering buying.

Discover the Amazon Kindle for yourself – and don’t forget to pick up a Kindle cover – it’ll customise and protect your device.

E-book readers are currently very popular. Much of the credit for that must be given to the Amazon Kindle reader of course – although there are many other e-book readers to choose from today. Even with so many new e-book readers available on the market, the Kindle is still the market leader – and by a long way.

It should be remembered that the e-book reader market -at least as a commercial enterprise – is still very new. This sector is expanding very quickly indeed, but it is still under development. For example, there is no agreement in the industry as to what format e-books should be stored in. Many of the new e-book readers seem to be going for the ePub format. Amazon has its own proprietary format for the Kindle books used on its Kindle reader – and it has received some criticism for this in the past.

In theory, an industry standard e-book format would allow books to be ported from one e-book reader to another. It would also allow customers more choice when buying e-books. More buying options and a greater degree of choice should be good for customers and tend to produce lower prices. You see the logic.

Amazon, with their proprietary Kindle format, can justifiably point to their long pedigree of offering their customers excellent value for money in the field of reading – hardback, paperback or e-book. Their stated strategy of selling Kindle books for $9.99 or less, has resulted in some uncomfortable negotiations with some of the major book publishing houses are trying to defend their profits from the sale of hardback books.

A recent study, carried out by the New York Times, looked at the average book price for the Kindle, Nook and Sony Daily Edition readers. Ten books, five fiction and five non-fiction, were selected from the NYT’s 2009 best books list. It was found that the Kindle had an average price of $ 13.69, the Sony reader’s average price was $ 15.26 and the Nook had an astonishing average price of $ 19.29 per book.

Not much evidence of Amazon using their market domination to profit there. In fact, based upon these numbers, if you read a book a week then the Kindle would save you $ 300 a year compared to the Nook. It would pay for itself and still leave you with enough money to buy a few books.

It’s difficult to imagine that the Amazon Kindle will wind up as the Betamax of the e-book world. Fans of Sony’s daily edition can take that any way they like. It seems likely that, for the moment at least, the main discussion that needs to take place is between the major publishers and e-book retailers. Only when all involved are agreed that the world of reading and publishing has changed will it be appropriate to agree on industry standards.

Learn more about the Amazon Kindle for yourself and view the wide range of Kindle accessories available to help you personalise your reader.

For many Internet marketers e-books are one of the cornerstones of their online business. Whether as an affiliate or an author, most online marketers will have sold or at least given away (maybe as a bonus) e-books at some time.

Currently, most e-books are distributed in PDF format, which is suitable for the popular Adobe Acrobat reader. Practically everybody has a copy of Acrobat on their hard drive, so this makes perfect sense. Even if someone does not have a copy of this program, all they have to do is visit the Adobe website where they can download Acrobat free of charge.

Whether you have written it yourself or have bought PLR rights, publishing your e-book is very simple. There are plenty of programs which will generate a PDF file for you. All that you need to do is market your e-book. Clickbank is a very popular option for this.

However, there is a fairly recent addition to the available publishing methods which you may not yet have considered. Right now the Amazon Kindle e-book reader is a hot, “must have” gadget. It’s an extremely nice personal electronic device. The fact that nearly every new e-book reader that shows any promise whatsoever is christened the “Kindle Killer”, shows that the Kindle is not just the current market leader, but is the industry standard which all new e-book readers will be judged against. The thing to note, from a marketing perspective, is the fact that more people use the Kindle than any other kind of e-book reader.

Aside from the hardware, one of the important influencing factors in the Kindle’s success to date has definitely been the huge number of Kindle books which are available on the Amazon website for readers to choose from. At the moment there are more than 420,000 Kindle books to pick from. This number is being added to at an average rate of approximately 500 new titles daily. So, as interesting as that undoubtedly is, what does it have to do with Internet marketing?

To get straight to the point, in addition to providing users with a new method of reading the Kindle also makes new publishing methods available. Anyone who has an Amazon account can quickly and easily publish a Kindle e-book. All you have to do is format your e-book using Microsoft Word, and then save it in HTML format before uploading it to the Amazon website. In no more than a matter of minutes your e-book could be on sale by the largest bookseller in the word.

As long as you set the price of your e-book between $0.99 and $9.99, Amazon will let you keep 70% of the sales price – minus a few cents for the delivery of the book (the delivery fee depends upon how many kilobytes the book takes up). This may be somewhat less than you might typically make selling a $97 e-book – whether as an affiliate or an author – but the potential for large sales volumes, and the fact that the process is free, may make it worth your while in the long run.

It’s also worth considering that the Kindle may be the future of both books and e-books as well. It’s an ideal opportunity for you to get in on the ground floor with what could very well turn out to be a totally new development in e-book marketing. So, maybe you should think about producing a Kindle edition of the next e-book!

Discover how you could make money thanks to the Amazon Kindle – selling Kindle books could be very profitable for you.

Amazon has a very strong link with books and reading, so it’s no big surprise that the Kindle reader has turned out to be such a perfect fit for the Amazon business model. During 2009 e-book readers really went mainstream, and a great deal of the credit for that must go to the Amazon Kindle. Both the Kindle 2 and the larger DX model generated a huge amount of publicity and really helped to bring e-books into the mainstream consumer marketplace.

The Kindle has become Amazon’s top selling product. It has a 60% share of the USA’s e-book reader market – Sony are in second place with approximately a 35% market share. Both Kindle models are now on sale in more than 100 countries around the world. There are a large number of new e-book readers from different manufacturers available on the market just now. Nevertheless, the Amazon Kindle remains the market leader by some way.

It’s a backhanded compliment to Amazon that practically every new reader that shows any potential whatsoever is given the title of the “Kindle Killer”. This simply serves to confirm the fact that the Kindle has become the industry benchmark against which all other readers will be measured. Amazon, in response to increased competition levels, has already dropped the price of the Kindle 2 by $100 since it was launched in February 2009. There has been no adjustment to the price of the Kindle DX thus far. However, the launch of the Apple iPad at the end of March 2010 may mean that Amazon will wish to re-evaluate the pricing policy of the Kindle DX.

In addition to developing the Kindle hardware and increasing the size of the available market, Amazon has also worked to ensure that the choice of Kindle books available continues to increase. Currently there are over 420,000 Kindle books to choose from and this number is being added to at an average rate of 500 new books daily.

In contrast to their competitors, who seem to be concentrating mainly on the development of e-book reader hardware, Amazon and making advances in a number of different areas. They are tweaking prices, releasing firmware updates for the existing Kindle models, growing their potential market and continually expanding the range of Kindle books on offer. In other words, not only are they capitalising on their dominant market position, but they are making the most of the strong association with books and reading.

So far Amazon have pretty much defined the e-book reader market. It will therefore be very interesting to see what features they decide to incorporate in the next version of the Kindle reader. This will give us all a good idea of the way that the e-book reader market is heading in future. There is no agreement amongst industry watchers as to when we can expect the next Kindle to appear. However, remembering the fact that the Kindle 2 is now just over 12 months old, it seems reasonable to assume that we will see a new, updated Kindle in 2010.

Discover the Amazon Kindle for yourself – and have a look at the wide range of Kindle accessories available to let you personalise and protect your reader.

You’ve probably come across this article because you’ve been asking yourself when to send that first text message after a date. It’s a question that bothers most people after a date and I’m afraid there isn’t just one answer.

Anyway, you’ve come to the right place because I would like to give you the benefit of my experience. I’ll give you my best advice on when to send that text message.

It’s a funny thing, texting. It’s only been in use about ten years but it’s come to be an important form of communication.

Back then, it was customary to call your date a day or two later to let them know you had a great time. While that is still acceptable by all means, many people prefer to keep it simple with a quick text message.

Things are a little different now and it’s not always easy to know what’s the best way of dealing with the situation.

My recommendation is to send a short text message within 24 hours of the date. You can even send it the same night, but what’s important is that you keep it short and sweet.

Make it light hearted and funny, and preferably something to do with anything that happened that night. There’s no need to say you had a great time, because the fact that you’re texting will implicitly send that message.

This will also spur a conversation that allows you to go back and forth as you please. Plus, the good thing about texting instead of calling is that it breaks the ice and sets the stage for that follow up call after the date.

You’ll be able to call a day or two later and you’ll have more to talk about seeing as how the seeds have already been planted from your texting conversations.

Aside from love, the writer additionally regularly writes about pressure washer nozzles and gas powered pressure washers.

Have you ever toyed with the idea of writing and publishing your own book? Many people have this dream. Could it be that you have the next great American novel tucked away in your desk drawer – or stored on your hard drive? Maybe you have a collection of poems or short stories, or perhaps you just want to write the life story of one of your relatives.

If any of the aforementioned scenarios sound familiar then you might be happy to learn that, not only are you far from alone, but that the options available to you are increasing every day. It has never been so easy to publish a book. Not only is it easier, it is also cheaper – and there are some options available which are completely free. As a matter of fact, you can even make money should your book sell well.

For example, Amazon are a company who apart from being very successful, have a strong Association with books and reading. When they launched the original Amazon website in 1995, the way that many people bought books changed dramatically.

With the launch of the Amazon Kindle reader in 2007, the way that people read books also began to change. The release of the enhanced Kindle 2 in February 2009, swiftly followed by the large format Kindle DX in the summer of the same year, facilitated the acceptance of e-book readers by the general public. Even although the market was still fairly new and in a developmental stage, sales of e-book readers and e-books really started to take off.

The Kindle reader was an excellent, extremely well designed piece of electronic kit, which met a market need. Over and above this, one of the key factors in its success was the huge selection of Kindle books which was available for readers to choose from. At the moment there are more than 400,000 titles available – and an average of 500 new titles are being added each and every day.

The Kindle reader, as well is changing the manner in which books are bought, delivered and read, affords would-be authors the opportunity to have their work published, showcased and sold by the largest bookseller in the world. Having a book published in Kindle format is easy, quick and free. Additionally – as long as you select a price for your book that is somewhere between $1 and $9.99, you will receive 70% of any book sales made. There is a small deduction for delivery. This depends upon the size, in kilobytes, of your book and is typically no more than a few cents.

You will need an Amazon account before you can publish your Kindle book. This is free – as a matter of fact, if you have ever purchased anything from Amazon then you will already have a free account. With your account in place, all you have to do is to format your book and upload it to Amazon’s website. One very simple way to do this is to format your book using Microsoft Word and then save it in HTML file format. This option can be found by selecting “save as” from the file menu. Other methods exist, but using Word is one of the easiest. It’s also a good idea to choose a suitable illustration for the cover of your book. This will make your book more appealing to potential buyers. This is also easy to do, simply upload your selected image to the Amazon site and you’re done. After that, you just need to fill in a few fields, choose a good title for your book, set your price – and you will be a published author!

Discover the Amazon Kindle reader for yourself – there are over 400,000 Kindle books to choose from.