With all the talk about e-book readers and how great they are, it is easy to forget what has been happening in the e-book reader market in the past few months. Some of the most promising e-reader devices have died without even making it to the market (e.g. Plastic Logic Que Reader). In fact, only a small number of devices from of our e-reader list from 2009 have made it to 2010. With Amazon dropping Kindle’s price to as low as $139, things are going to get even more difficult for those small players.

It is not all doom and gloom as Ars Technica puts it, but there is no question the e-reader market is maturing:

Sprint and Hearst cancelled the Skiff e-reader, then the Plastic Logic QUE was delayed yet gain. Last month, long-time Dutch e-reader maker IREX went bankrupt—the Iliad e-reader just didn’t sell well enough in the US, and the company ran out of cash.

Ars Technica has a point about Kindle and iPad putting almost too much pressure on other e-readers. The price gap between Apple iPad and Kindle should give other companies the chance to come up with more sophisticated e-readers and compete without going head to head against Apple iPad and Amazon Kindle. There is going to be a market for multi-touch and even color e-paper readers. Players interested in those ideas need to find a way to keep their prices low enough to avoid crossing any major market segment boundaries.

We knew Apple was going places with the iPad. What we did not expect was the speed in which the company has increased its e-book market-share. During WWDC 2010, Steve Jobs announced that Apple had sold over 5 million e-books since the launch of iPad. That puts Apple’s Ebook market-share roughly at 22%. Steve Jobs did not specify more details about these stats, so it is tough to know how Apple iBooks has fared against Amazon Kindle for iPad.

Apple is not stopping with iPad. iBooks is coming to iPhone 4, so people will have the opportunity to buy e-books on those tiny devices. Considering the reception that iPhone 4 has gotten, Apple could easily double its market-share in a flash (at 2.5 books per device pace) . iBooks will be getting a major upgrade in the near future too (which will include support for PDF). Wireless syncing across multiple devices is going to be a big plus.

The hot story on the web seems to be the fact that Dan Brown’s latest book, The Lost Symbol, is selling more in e-book edition than its paperback counterpart. The Kindle Nation caught this development, and the web went crazy over it. After all, if an ebook can dominate the book sales on Amazon, that’s certainly great news for publishers who have been wanting to be on Amazon Kindle but have had doubts about the device’s potential. It’s true that not everyone’s is as negative as Rupert Murdoch on Kindle, but many in the publishing world have been wondering whether e-books are catching fire with all the push that Amazon and other companies have put behind this market.

But is this truly a valid example of an e-book selling its paperback counterpart? I have my doubts. After all, let’s not forget that Jeff Bezos wrote a long story about how people can order and read Dan’s latest book on Amazon Kindle a while ago. The letter was displayed to a whole lot of visitors, so the e-book version of this book did get a big push from Amazon. Let’s not forget that the book costs only $16 or so. So in order to get free shipping, you’ll have to spend another $9. So we are looking at the e-book version costing only half of the paperback edition.

You thought Apple may be the toughest competitor to Amazon in the e-book market (with its upcoming MediaPad)? Think again. Google did announce a while back that it was planning to compete with Amazon (in an indirect way). But who knew Google had grand plans for the e-book market? Google announced that it is working on an e-book ecosystem that will put a whole lot of e-books in the hands of consumers. And unlike Amazon, Google publishers will get to set their own price.

Google has not decided whether its ebooks will be copy-protected. It’d be interesting to see whether Google tries to one up Amazon by making its ebooks available without it. Here is what Google’s spokesman had to say about Google’s big new project:

we hope to give publisher partners an additional way to sell their books by allowing users to purchase access to partner program books online. We want to build and support a digital book ecosystem to allow our partner publishers to make their books available for purchase from any Web-enabled device.

Google’s Book Partnership Program will offer consumers yet another way to access to a whole lot of titles to consume on their netbooks or even Kindles. I don’t believe Google will introduce an e-book reader to compliment its ebooks service, but Apple might! Google’s move can level the playing field in this market a bit. A lot of start-ups (e.g. Plastic Logic) and established companies (Sony) have trouble competing with Amazon due to their lack of access to enough ebook titles. But now they will have access to Google’s huge book database, and they can spend more time improving their hardware to go head to head against Amazon. And how about Apple MediaPad? Will Apple pounce on this opportunity to mount a serious challenge against Amazon Kindle? One thing is for certain. When companies compete, we win. And a competition between Google and Amazon will be a sight to see in the upcoming months!

Your take: will Google’s latest project put Amazon under real pressure? Can Google kill Amazon Kindle indirectly by allowing more Kindle killers to emerge out of nowhere?

A few days ago, I mentioned how the pressure was mounting on Amazon to make changes to its Read-To-Me feature on Kindle 2.0. Since the day Kindle 2.0 was introduced, a few people were making the case against Read-To-Me and its legality. It seems Amazon has finally caved in and decided to make software changes necessary to empower publishers and authors to choose if they want Read-To-Me enabled for their titles. In essence, if you are an author, and you do not like folks listening to your book on their Kindle, you can just disable the feature.

On the surface, this doesn’t sound like a bad idea. Amazon is allowing the authors to claim the audio rights for their books. And Read-To-Me still remains on Kindle 2.0.  But we have been here before with Adobe. This decision doesn’t kill Read-To-Me, but it pushes it to the brink. The audio that you hear on Kindle is very much different from what you get in a professionally made audio-book. But Amazon has decided that it does not want to deal with the legal ramifications of leaving Read-To-Me as it is. While many authors may leave the feature enabled for their readers, I suspect a lot of folks see this as an opportunity to make more money. There is nothing wrong with making money from your work, but Authors Guild decision to challenge Read-to-Me shows how our legal system hinders innovation. Instead of attacking the Kindle, maybe these guys need to focus more on providing more value with their audio-books.

Your take: did Amazon do the right thing by putting the ball in the publishers’ court? Should Amazon offer partial refunds to Kindle 2.0 owners?