Amazon.com said on Thursday that the company now sells more eBooks than books printed on paper.

"Customers are now choosing Kindle books more often than print books," said Jeff Bezos, Amazon's founder and chief executive, in a statement. "We had high hopes that this would happen eventually, but we never imagined it would happen this quickly -- we've been selling print books for 15 years and Kindle books for less than four years."

Since April 1, for every 100 print books sold on Amazon, 105 Kindle eBooks have been sold, as noted by Times reporter Carolyn Kellogg on our sister blog Jacket Copy.

"This includes sales of hardcover and paperback books by Amazon where there is no Kindle edition," the company said. "Free Kindle books are excluded and if included would make the number even higher."

The success of eBooks isn't limited to just Amazon and its Kindle. The entire industry is pushing more digital copies now, with eBook sales tripling over the last year.

Among the recent contributors to eBook sales for the Seattle-based retail giant is the newest, cheapest version of its Kindle -- Kindle with Special Offers -- which sells for $114 and has risen to be the company's best selling eReader, Bezos said.

Unlike other Kindles, Kindle with Special Offers runs advertisements and digital coupons on the eReader's display in a strip across the bottom of the home screen or as a screen saver when the device isn't in use.

But while Amazon is more than willing to disclose that its eBook sales have passed print, the company is sticking to its usual policy of not disclosing actual numbers for just how big the sales of either are.

From Jacket Copy:

Amazon also notes that year-to-date sales of Kindle e-books total more than three times those sold in the same period last year. But what those numbers are is not known.

Although Amazon is quick to share news of the popularity of its e-books, it does not make public actual numbers of Kindles sold or e-books sold.

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-- Nathan Olivarez-Giles

twitter.com/nateog

Photo: An Amazon Kindle eReader stands between a row of books in this arranged photograph. Credit: Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg

Robert Kiyosaki has written more than a dozen titles under his "Rich Dad" brand of financial education books, which together have sold more than 30 million copies worldwide.

But the author known for his bestseller "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" is looking to do something a bit different with his latest release, "Unfair Advantage" -- he's selling digitally signed copies.

 "Almost every time I do a book signing we have to turn people away, and someone doesn't get a book signed  because there isn't enough time or the bookstore can't accommodate all the people who show up," Kiyosaki said in a recent interview. "And I travel a lot, but there are always cities we can't reach, people who want to make it to a signing but can't. With an e-book signing, everyone can buy a signed copy if they want. We can reach more people."

And in the process, sell more books too, he said.

"I feel like I've autographed about 500,000 books myself," Kiyosaki said.

"And I love getting to meet readers, but I also come from more of a marketing side, and you always need some kind of incentive to make things exciting and to get people to pay attention to you. Our job is to attract as many eyeballs as possible. And in the world of competition you have to do something different, and autographed e-books is something new."

Kiyosaki isn't the first to offer up a signed copy of an e-book, but his approach might be unique.

Barnes & Noble is set to announce a new eReader on May 24, according to a regulatory filing from the company.

"In a meeting with investor analysts on May 4, 2011, Barnes & Noble, Inc. ... indicated it expects to make an announcement on May 24, 2011 regarding the launch of a new eReader device," Barnes & Noble said in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The bookseller and eReader maker didn't detail what the new device would be called, cost or look like.

But so far, Barnes & Noble's two eReaders have been called the Nook and Nook Color. The Nook, which sells for $149, features 2 GB of memory and a 6-inch eInk screen similar to that of the rivals Amazon Kindle eReader and Sony Reader.

The Nook Color has a 7-inch color touchscreen, 8 GB of storage space, runs on a limited version of Google's Android operating system and sells for $249.

Last month, Barnes & Noble released an update to the Nook Color that pushed it more in the direction of tablets, adding its own app store with games such as Angry Birds, a native email app and a Nook Friends social network, which allows users to see what their friends are reading, check out book reviews, loan or borrow eBooks, share how far along in a book they are and recommend titles to friends.

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Photo: A Nook Color and Nook eReader side by side. Credit: Northeast Kansas Library System

Barnes & Noble's Nook Color gained a few new features on Monday that push the device more into the classification of a tablet computer and not simply another e-reader.

Among the additions is a store for buying applications, which Barnes & Noble is calling Nook Apps; apps for email, calendars and contacts; support for Adobe Air and Flash; and a new Nook social networking app.

One thing that isn't changing, however, is the price -- $249 for the 7-inch touch-screen device, which features 8GB of storage.

The updates come as the Nook Color is being switched over to a newer version of Google's Android operating system, called Froyo. Unlike the Honeycomb software, which was designed specifically to run on tablets, Froyo was designed for phones but is on many tablets, such as the Samsung Galaxy Tab.

But while the Nook Color can now run Android Froyo, it won't be running all Android apps. Instead, Barnes & Noble is asking developers to optimize their apps for the Nook Color and submit them through the Nook Apps store, rather than simply allowing users to download apps from the Android Market.

As of Monday, 125 apps were available in the Nook Apps store, including Angry Birds, one of the more popular games available on tablets and smartphones nowadays. Other apps include Pandora Internet radio, the game Uno, the cooking app Epicurious and the as-seen-on-iPad news app Pulse.

Barnes & Noble is also taking a stab at building its own social network among Nook users called Nook Friends.

Using a Nook Friends app, Nook users can see what their friends are reading, read reviews of books, loan books to each other, share quotes from a book, list their progress in a book and recommend a title to a buddy.

In another nod to social networking, Nook users can now "like" titles in the device's bookstore app, with the liking showing up on a person's Facebook page.

The Nook Color updates, which are free, are being pushed to users via Wi-Fi beginning this week or available for manual download at www.nookcolor.com/update.

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Image: Angry Birds running on a Nook Color tablet from Barnes & Noble. Credit: Barnes & Noble

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

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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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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."