Amazon.com announced a new effort on Wednesday that will allow Kindle users to check out e-books from more than 11,000 public libraries sometime later this year.

The move comes about a month after Amazon blocked Lendle, a startup company that used to allow Kindle users to loan e-books to one another, from accessing its online e-book databases.

The Seattle-based retail giant did not specify when its "Kindle Library Lending" program would start, but the company did say that the perks of reading a purchased e-book on a Kindle e-reading device or through a Kindle app will be in place -- such as syncing of notes across Kindle apps and readers, finding the last page read and highlighting of text.

The Kindle is the most popular e-reader on the market and it's also Amazon's best-selling item, though the world's largest online retailer won't say just how many Kindles it has sold.

Amazon said its Kindle library lending will be available for all generations of Kindle e-readers and its free Kindle apps found on desktops, laptops and devices, such as many popular smartphones and tablet computers.

The company did not say how long the lending period for Kindle e-books would be, or if there were any restrictions on the number of checkouts for any books.

Barnes & Noble bookstores introduced its Nook e-reader in 2009 and since its launch, the Nook has offered library e-book lending.

As our sister-blog Jacket Copy covered last month, publisher HarperCollins has imposed its "26-checkout limit," which forces libraries to repurchase an e-book every 26 times the title has been loaned out.

The HarperCollins policy has left many cash-strapped libraries frustrated. Other publishers, such as Macmillan and Simon & Schuster (two of the major six publishers in the U.S.), don't yet offer their e-books to libraries.

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-- Nathan Olivarez-Giles

twitter.com/nateog

Photo: An Amazon Kindle e-reader on top of an Apple iPad, which can run a Kindle app for reading e-books. Credit: Kodomut via Flickr

E-book sales are piling up fast. 

In February, a couple of months after huge numbers of readers got electronic reading devices for the holidays, sales of e-books reached $90 million -- more than tripling the number from a year earlier, according to the Assn. of American Publishers.

Although that number was still smaller than sales for all paper formats combined, it outstripped any single print format -- hardcover, trade paperback or mass market paperback (think mystery novels and blocky airport fare).

Scorching e-book sales are generating another side effect, publishers said.

"Trade publishing houses cite e-books as generating fresh consumer interest in -- and new revenue streams for -- 'backlist' titles," the AAP said in a statement. Backlist titles are "books that have been in print for at least a year. Many publishers report that e-book readers who enjoy a newly released book will frequently buy an author’s full backlist."

The AAP's data comes from 84 publishing houses, including 16 that sell e-books.

Last summer, online retailer Amazon.com Inc. said sales of e-books for its Kindle reader had far eclipsed hardcover book sales, noting at the time that it had been selling e-books for only a little more over two years and had been selling paper books since 1995.

Apple's iPad has also caught on quickly as a reading device, selling more than 100 million e-books since it was introduced about a year ago.

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Image: Amazon's Kindle device. Credit: kodomut via Flickr

Amazon is cutting the entry price of the Kindle by $25 -- but it'll cost readers in the form of on-screen ads which they can vote on as "attractive" or not.

The Seattle-based online retail and e-reader giant announced its lower-priced Kindle, dubbed Kindle with Special Offers, on Monday.

The ad-running reader will sell for $114 and start shipping May 3. The regular Kindle, free of advertisement, sells for $139 or $189 with free 3G wireless service.

Ads will display on the Kindle with Special Offers only in a strip across the bottom of the home screen or as a screen saver when the device isn't in use, and thus never interrupt reading, Amazon Chief Executive Jeff Bezos said in a statement.

"Companies sponsor the screen savers, you pay less for your Kindle," Bezos said."Plus, you receive offers directly on your Kindle that can save you more money, such as a $20 Amazon gift card for $10, six Audible books for $6 and an album from the Amazon mp3 store for $1."

Buick, Chase, Olay and Visa are among the initial companies running ads on Kindle with Special Offers readers.

Amazon is also looking to enroll readers' help in choosing which screensaver ads are displayed by making available a Kindle app where users can vote on which ads they prefer, Bezos said.

The ad-voting app is called AdMash, which sounds a bit like and will work similarly to Facemash, the Mark Zuckerberg-built precursor to Facebook, which showed users photos of two Harvard women and had them vote on which was more attractive.

"Anyone who's interested can download AdMash and help pick future screen savers," Bezos said. "Two prospective screen savers show up side by side, and you pick the one you find the most attractive. The ones preferred most by customers qualify to become sponsored screen savers."

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-- Nathan Olivarez-Giles

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Image: A screen shot of Amazon.com's page announcing the Kindle With Special Offers.

Apple is in talks with record companies to allow users to download music tracks they buy on iTunes to any iTunes-enabled device, Bloomberg reported Friday. That would presumably mean any song you buy for your iPhone could then be downloaded multiple times (for no extra cost) to your iPad, your Mac or your PC.

In many ways this move is exactly in line with what other media publishers have already started to do -- let users pay once, and use anywhere.  That way, users can forget whether they first bought a book or television show for a specific device, and just watch it whenever and wherever they want.

Apple, which now controls a huge chunk of the music business through iTunes, also wants to get to that place of ultimate convenience, and has been moving in that direction for some time.

The company has already got AirPlay, which lets users play songs from any iTunes device through an Apple TV.  And this week Apple said the new version of its iOS operating system will enable users to play music and video stored on one device on the screen of a second device, over WiFi.

If and when Apple gets the music industry to agree to repeated downloads, there's no longer any real barrier to cloud-based, streaming music -- where listeners won't have to wait for downloads, because they'll be able to immediately play any song in their online music collection.

The e-book industy has largely pioneered this approach:  If you buy an Amazon e-book, you can download it to your Kindle, your PC, and any smartphone or tablet with the Kindle app installed.  The same is true for books bought through Google. Even Apple's iBookStore allows users to sync their books between the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.

This is increasingly also the case with movies and TV shows, where services like Netflix allow users with monthly subscriptions to watch movies and TV on any Netflix-enabled device, whether that's a Roku box or a TiVo, an iPad, an iPhone, Windows Phones and soon, Android.  You can watch these movies and films as many times as you want.

Though newspaper and magazine publishers are a little further behind the game, they''ll all be multiplatform soon too.  The for-pay Wall Street Journal, already on the iPad, was early in releasing an Android app, and magazine publisher Condé Nast has said Android additions are on the way too.

When it comes to ease of accessing content you've bought online, the only real holdout is the music industry. 

On the league-leading iTunes system, users have long been frustrated with their inability to keep all their purchased music in one central place.  The result is often a set of Apple devices -- a Mac, an iPhone and an iPad, say -- all with different fragments of your music collection.  That collection, incidentally, does not reside on a remote server, but on your own devices -- so if you've been downloading music from Apple for years on a series of devices, it becomes a confusing jumble. 

That's why Bloomberg's report makes sense:  Apple doesn't like clutter.  What they like is allowing people to easily buy things, and be able to access them without friction -- the better to get people to buy even more.

The remaining question may be:  If the record companies jump on board with this model, will they let users who bought songs through Apple listen to the songs on non-Apple devices? 

Or would that be too easy...

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It's that time of year again, when the eyes of the gadget-loving world turn to downtown San Francisco for one of Apple Inc.'s now-famous unveiling events.  While we don't know for sure, the buzz and early reports strongly suggest the company will show off the second generation of its iPad tablet computer and possibly a few cool new apps and features that go with it. 

Here's our story rounding up some of the likely new bells and whistles.

The show starts at 10 a.m. Pacific time, but we'll be here at 9:30 a.m. to blog about the event as it happens, complete with pics and commentary.  See you then!

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-- David Sarno

Image: Apple press invite for iPad related event in March. Credit: Apple

Random House Inc. on Monday ended its long stand against the so-called "agency model" for sales of e-books, a move that could pave the way for the publisher to join its competitors on Apple's iPad.

Under the agency model, publishers set prices on their e-books and keep 70% of the sale price, while digital book sellers keep the remaining 30%.

Apple released its iPad, and the Apple-run iBookStore, in April of last year.  Around that time, five of the six major book publishers -- Penguin, Harper-Collins, Simon & Schuster, Macmillan and Hachette Book Group -- agreed to the agency model. As with all content sold through Apple's iTunes store, Apple keeps 30% of the retail price of e-books.

Random House held out, and its bestselling books ("The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo," "Da Vinci Code," etc) have not been available through Apple's bookstore.

Now, that may change. Random House would not comment on whether its 17,000 e-book titles will arrive in the iBookStore, potentially when Apple announces a new version of the iPad this Wednesday in San Francisco. But it did offer the following statement:

“We are making this change both as an investment in the successful digital transition of our existing partners and in order to give us the opportunity to forge new retail relationships."

AT&T will begin selling Amazon's Kindle 3G on Sunday as it looks toward other gadgets to increase its customer base outside of cellphones.

The Kindle 3G will sell for $189 at AT&T's retail stores, the same price Amazon sells the e-reader for online. Amazon has said that the Kindle is the most popular item sold on its gigantic retail website -- though the company has never said exactly how many it has sold.

AT&T will not sell Amazon's Wi-Fi-only version of the Kindle because, unlike the Kindle 3G, it doesn't utilize AT&T's wireless network.

For every Kindle 3G sold by both Amazon and AT&T, the wireless carrier gains a new 3G user. Amazon pays AT&T about $3 or $4 a month to provide 3G service to every Kindle 3G at no monthly cost to the consumer, according to a Bloomberg report.

The Kindle is the first e-reader-only device AT&T will sell in its more than 2,000 U.S. stores, sitting along other non-phone items such as the Apple iPad, Dell Streak 5 and Samsung Galaxy Tab tablet computers.

"Amazon has without question pioneered the eReader space with Kindle, and it's exciting to not only connect this device through our network, but now offer it in our stores to readers around the country," Glenn Lurie, AT&T's president of emerging devices, said in a statement.

The Kindle 3G also can connect to the Internet via Wi-Fi when available. Wireless Web connections are used to buy and download books from Amazon that can be then read on the Kindle's e-Ink display.

AT&T also provides 3G service to Barnes & Noble's Nook and Sony's Reader line.

Apple is hosting an iPad-related event on Wednesday in San Francisco that is widely expected to be the unveiling of the iPad 2. Like the original iPad, AT&T is expected to sell the iPad 2 and offer a 3G wireless plan for the device as well.

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Photo: The Amazon Kindle 3G. Credit: Amazon

Apple Inc. is changing the rules about how e-books can be sold and accessed via its iPhone and iPad devices -- a move that may get the attention of regulators, one analyst said.

Apple on Tuesday said it was changing its rules to require any vendors who sell books to iPhone and iPad users through their websites to also allow users to buy books inside the app. Until now, companies such as Google and Amazon have routed iPhone app users to their own book sites to purchase books they could download into the app. But Apple is now probably going to force those booksellers to change their apps.

"We are now requiring that if an app offers customers the ability to purchase books outside of the app, that the same option is also available to customers from within the app with in-app purchase," said a statement by Apple spokesperson Trudy Muller.

Sony sparked an outcry Monday night when it said the latest version of its e-reading app had been rejected by Apple over related issues.

James McQuivey, an analyst with Forrester Research, saw the move by Apple as a way to force more transactions to be funneled through its app store, where Apple receives a 30% cut of any sale.

"One way to look at this is that Apple is leveraging its monopoly power"over the iPad and iPhone platforms," McQuivey said. "One could argue that Apple is simply maximizing shareholder value by leveraging its platforms."

But McQuivey cited two potential drawbacks to Apple’s approach.

By dictating where digital books can be sold and turning away developers such as Sony, Apple may be squelching innovation, he said.

Secondly, such restrictions could be interpreted as restraint of trade, which is frowned upon by federal regulators such as the U.S. Federal Trade Commission.

"I wouldn’t be surprised if phones were ringing at the FTC today about this," McQuivey said.

Google is building an Android newsstand and has begun talks with several magazine publishers in an effort to corral digital content, according to a report from the Wall Street Journal. The move would ratchet up Google's efforts to challenge Apple with its Android operating system by offering publishers an alternative distribution route on smart phones and tablet computers to that of Apple's iTunes, iPhone and iPad.

Google has discussed the Android newsstand with publishers such as Condé Nast, the Hearst Corp. and Time Warner's Time Inc. and has promised some that it would take a smaller cut than the 30% share of revenue that Apple normally takes through iTunes, according to the Journal report, which cites anonymous sources.

The search-engine giant, also known for its Web-based Google Gmail system, also has offered to give publishers access to certain pieces of personal data from each customer who purchases versions of its publications on Android, the report said.

Apple might also be making similar moves toward sharing more of a customer's personal data with publishers, the Journal reported, as well as other changes to iTunes to help publishers more easily for sell subscriptions and single issues of magazines.

It's unknown when Google might launch its Android newsstand, and it's possible the effort might not come to fruition, the report said.

Officials at Apple and Google could not be reached for comment on the rumors Monday morning.

Google already has dipped a toe into the publishing pool. Last month, Google started selling books online through its Google eBookstore in a move that challenged not only Apple's iBooks, but also online retailer Amazon, maker of the Kindle e-reader.

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-- Nathan Olivarez-Giles
twitter.com/nateog

Photo: A woman holds an iPad displaying the cover of the multimedia magazine Project, developed for the iPad by Richard Branson, head of Virgin Group, at a news conference in New York on Nov. 30, 2010. Credit: Mike Segar / Reuters

Bookseller Barnes & Noble said Thursday that it now sells more digital books than physical volumes on its online bookstore.

Customers bought or downloaded nearly 1 million e-books on Christmas Day alone, the company said in a press release.

The Nook e-reader has become a bestseller, according to the bookseller. The Nook Color, introduced two months before Christmas, was the company's No. 1 selling holiday gift item, according to the company release.

Barnes & Noble launched the Nook last year to compete with Amazon's Kindle reader. Analysts estimate that Barnes & Noble has sold about 2 million Nooks, while the Kindle, launched in 2007, is thought to have sold about 6 million devices, according to Reuters.

While Barnes & Noble claims a 20% share of the e-book market, the company reported a loss in the quarter ending Oct. 30.

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Photo: The Barnes & Noble Nook Color reader. Credit: Richard Drew / Associated Press