Amazon had a quite successful year in 2011. It brought the Kindle Fire to the market and sold millions of these e-readers in the last month. In fact, studies have shown that Amazon Kindle Fire may already be on its way to becoming the #2 tablet right behind the iPad. But Amazon has been losing a ton of money to get here. It is no secret that Amazon loses money each time a new Kindle Fire is bought. That partially explains why the company’s shares have started falling as the company has missed sales estimates yet again.

Amazon earned $17.4 billion in revenue in the 4th quarter of 2011 (missing the $18.3m estimate). But net income fell by 57%. Investors are particularly disappointed that Amazon got less revenue from digital media than anticipated. The fact that Amazon is not as profitable as some were hoping can be explained by the company’s push to squeeze margins to grow. But the sales slowdown is not a good sign for Amazon.

Amazon has put a lot of pressure on other players in the tablet market by offering the Kindle Fire for such a low price. The company is really pushing it with its pricing strategies. So its expenses are expected to remain high for the time being. Will investors stay patient? We will have to wait and see.

Amazon is dedicated to dominating the e-book industry for years to come. The company already has an e-reading platform that others find hard to compete with. It may be losing money on devices such as Kindle Fire. But Amazon will offset its costs with all the content it  gets to sell to its customers. As the NY Times reports, the company is now going around publishers to sign up authors. Amazon will publish 122 books this fall and plans to bring more big name authors on-board.

Considering the amount of power the company has gathered in this industry, it is no wonder that most publishers are confused and even afraid of Amazon. After all, the company is now competing with bookstores, publishers, and even agents.

If you’re a bookstore, Amazon has been in competition with you for some time. If you’re a publisher, one day you wake up and Amazon is competing with you too. And if you’re an agent, Amazon may be stealing your lunch because it is offering authors the opportunity to publish directly and cut you out.

explains Richard Curtis, a veteran agent and book publisher. In reality, writers and readers are the only constants in this business. Others will have to watch their back the way Amazon is going.

To sweeten its deal with authors, Amazon is offering them Nielsen BookScan sales data. This provides authors will all kinds of useful information to help them sell more books. Publishers are not going to sit around and let Amazon eat their cake. Some may even use legal threats to keep their authors from running away from them. Amazon may be putting pressure on publishers and agents, but it could also help a lot of currently unknown authors. This fight is far from over though.

NovelRank displays your current and previous months’ sales on Amazon. It also displays your current rank. Not sure when you sold your last book? That information is made available through this service. To gain access to more details, you should download the data in CSV format.

NovelRank shows you the attention your book has received on Twitter and in the blog world. It even tells you your best day and hour based on your sales information. Its iPhone application is very handy too. Users can take advantage of it to track their sales rank for printed and Kindle version of their books. Just like its online version, NovelRank for iOS displays data from Amazon’s stores in the U.S., U.K, France, Germany, Japan, and Canada. The chart feature is very nice.

If you are looking for a productive way to keep track of your book sales on Amazon, you can’t go wrong with NovelRank.

According to multiple sources, The Book Depository will continue to operate separately for now. As the Guardian suggested, this deal is far from done.

The publishing industry will be worried about the concentration of power in Amazon’s hands. They don’t like the stranglehold it has over online bookselling as it is.

said Neill Denny, editor of the Bookseller magazine. Unfortunately, this deal could lead to price rises and the end of the free shipping deal in the near future. Is Amazon becoming too powerful in the e-book industry? After all, the company controls a large portion of the market. At this point, Amazon does not seem to be in danger of being investigated for its acquisitions though.

Consumers do not like to pay more than they have to get their hands on e-books and e-book readers. When Kindle was released a few years ago for $399, many assumed that the device was worth it over the long run if Amazon dropped its e-book prices. Amazon did try to sell all of its e-books for $9.99 or less. But some publishers had other ideas. While companies such as Amazon and Apple have struggled to lower e-book prices dramatically, e-reader prices have come down on a consistent basis.

Amazon Kindle is now being offered for $139. It could potentially be offered for free with an e-book subscription (or ad-based) plan. iPad 2 will still be offered for as low as $499, when it starts shipping. Still, people are not just satisfied with these prices. It is true that people pick up e-readers to read at all times more conveniently. But owning an e-book is not the same as having a physical book in your hands. The fact that people can’t sell back their e-books is not exactly encouraging.

E-book readers are getting cheaper and should be free in the near future. Let’s face it. E-book stores can make more people buy their e-books if they provided them with the tools to do so. As cheap as Kindle is, some people still don’t want to pay $139 to get a dedicated e-reader. The iPad was never designed to be a dedicated e-reader anyway.

Not all e-books need to be offered for $0.99. But in a world where publishers keep complaining about piracy, there is no reason for authors not to try more aggressive pricing strategies. Unfortunately, that is easier said than done.

Meet the new king of the mountain on Amazon.com: Amazon Kindle. With all the push that Amazon provided Kindle with on its web properties, it was only a matter of time before Kindle became the best selling product of all time. Amazon helped its case by slashing its Kindle prices aggressively. While Amazon is still not providing us with actual numbers, we do know that Kindle has passed Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in popularity (at least on Amazon.com).

Amazon has played its cards cleverly in the past few months. Before 2010, many expected tablets to be challengers to devices such as Kindle. But few expected Apple to be so successful in the tablet market. Apple’s success has encouraged many other companies to plan their own tablets. Meanwhile, B&N and Borders started an e-reader price war with Amazon that was arguably won by Amazon. The lower e-reader prices forced Amazon’s rivals into a corner and gave Amazon the chance to position its product more effectively against iPad and other expensive tablets.

Amazon may want to thank Barnes & Noble, Sony, and Borders for igniting a price war earlier this year. Sure, the steep markdowns have zapped margins, but it has helped set the e-reader market apart from Apple’s iPad and the rest of the tablet market,

explains Motley Fool’s Rick Aristotle Munarriz. The war is far from over. 2011 is expected to be the year of tablets. Motorola, HTC, ASUS, Acer, and Dell will all be bringing new shiny products to the market in the early parts of 2011. Amazon may have dodged a bullet with Kindle 3, but it will need to continue keeping its fans excited with a much better Kindle 4. Can Amazon deliver in that regard? We will have to wait and see.

We have been calling for Amazon to bring a solar powered Kindle to the market for a couple of years now. Amazon does not seem to be interested in that concept at this point. But Toshiba and KDDI have pulled it off with the Biblio Leaf. This solar e-reader, which will be available in Japan for now, has a 6 inch e-ink screen and 3G capability. It does have a stylus for taking notes. The solar cell at the bottom of this e-reader will allow its owners to keep their device charged with the power of the sun (beats using a solar charger).

Toshiba and KDDI seem to have gotten the business model right as well. This reader will be offered for free with a 2 year, $20 a month wireless contract. At this point, we are not sure how long the solar battery will last. Nevertheless, Biblio Leaf is quite a unique e-reader that could have its fans in the U.S..

Will Amazon offer Kindle 4 for free with a wireless contract or an e-book subscription plan? Now that seems to be the most interesting question of them all.

When a company is leading in a market, it is easier for it to take it slower. Amazon has dominated the e-reader market for a while. But its e-book business is being heavily challenged by Google and its cloud-based eBookStore. It did not take Amazon a whole lot of time to respond to Google eBookStore. The company told ComputerWorld that it was readying a new Kindle for Web that would enable users to read e-books in full on the web:

enable users to read full books in the browser and [enable] any Website to become a bookstore offering Kindle books.

Amazon’s new Kindle service sounds exciting. But the company is still at a disadvantage considering its closed platform. Allen Weiner of Gartner agrees:

Whether there’s a big battle between Google and Amazon depends on what Amazon does next. If Amazon is serious about the device space, they are going to have to open up devices … whether that is based on Windows or Android or something else.

James McQuivey, an analyst at Forrester, saw it from a different angle. In his eyes, Google’s new service is good news for Amazon too:

In the long run, Google eBooks may just convert more people to e-reading who may then go on to buy a Kindle

Amazon should still be the leader in this market even after the monster of a service that Google unveiled yesterday. Amazon still has the most popular black/white e-reader on the market. It is expected to introduce an Android Tablet in 2011 to go with its Android App Store. At this point, Google has more question marks over its service than Amazon.

Which side are you on? Google or Amazon?

Amazon prepared for the holiday shopping season in the best way possible. It managed to rile up many of its customers by allowing a pedophilia for dummies type of book to reach Kindle store. Even though people were outraged by the book, it seems many took the time to buy it, helping it to reach the top 100 list on Amazon (while helping the author make some cash in the process). By defending its action, Amazon did open a can of worms:

Amazon believes it is censorship not to sell certain books simply because we or others believe their message is objectionable. Amazon does not support or promote hatred or criminal acts, however, we do support the right of every individual to make their own purchasing decisions.

Amazon’s own policy gives the company the right to remove objectionable content from its store. While Amazon’s dedication to protecting the freedom of speech is admirable, this was the wrong opportunity for Amazon to demonstrate that. The backlash has been so severe that even Diapers.com (which Amazon will soon acquire) had to post this update on its Facebook page:

Hi Everyone. While our parent company has been purchased by Amazon.com we have NO control over what is sold on their site. If there are any complaints or concerns please send them to Amazon.com

Unlike many other bloggers, we do not intend to boycott Amazon nor do we believe the company made this mistake intentionally. The response was unnecessary. Amazon should have probably done a better job catching this book (considering that the author provided Amazon with a disgusting description and a provocative book cover).

Amazon defending freedom of speech was certainly courageous. But Amazon chose the absolute worst time to defend its actions. When emotions are running high, people just want some action to be taken (just like 9/11 and the Iraq war debacle). Amazon should have understood that. Here are a few things we learned from this episode:

• Freedom is messy: we have always been against companies censoring the products they offer. When a company allows all kinds of content to make it to its store, there is a good chance some of them turn out to be disgusting products. Consumers are in control. In this case, consumers helped the book reach the top 100 list in Kindle store. What does that tell you?
• Amazon picked the wrong time to stir the pot: timing is everything when trying to make a point. Amazon defending its actions while it all seemed like a big mistake was pushing it too far. Amazon seems to have had an organizational breakdown in communication this time around.
• People still don’t read: I have not read the book. But I have seen passages of it on a few blogs. Did all the people who left negative messages on Amazon seconds after the news about it broke out actually read the book?
• Amazon’s review system needs work: this has been a big issue for Amazon for quite some time. Fake reviews are still very real. People leaving negative comments on political books without even reading them has been going on for a long time. The reviews section on Amazon.com should not be a platform to make political points or show outrage with a product people have not even bought.
• A can of worms has been opened: Amazon will survive this. But it will most likely implement tighter controls for its Kindle store. There are plenty of other controversial books available in that store. Where does Amazon draw the line?

What’s your take? Will you boycott Amazon over this?

While Amazon is turning its attention to iPad, Apple is going to put pressure on Amazon Kindle and other e-readers by making iPad available for sale in Target stores. That would give shoppers the opportunity to test drive the device before picking it up. Amazon does have a similar deal going with Target though.

Apple may not be too worried about Amazon Kindle, but it won’t give up on the e-book industry anytime soon as its too lucrative.