In the past couple of years, Amazon has gotten even more aggressive with its strategy to solidify its position in the tablet market. The latest rumor suggests that Amazon may be working on the idea of building brick-and-mortal boutiques to showcase its e-readers, tablets, and other products. Unnamed sources have told Google E-Reader that Amazon will be starting its brick-and-mortal journey with a retail store in Seattle.

This will be a pilot project. Amazon does not plan to bring stores to a place near you right away (unless you are in Seattle). These stores will focus on selling high margin and high-end items, including the Kindle e-readers and accessories for those. The company is expected to sell select print books through its store. It could also provide its customers a hub, through which they would be able to search through e-books.

Amazon may be selling all kinds of products online. But its main focus remains on digital products at this point. By building its own physical stores, Amazon will not only get around the internet taxation discussion, it will also put more pressure on Barnes & Noble and Apple (the former is already refusing to stock physical books from Amazon’s publishing platform). If the rumor is correct, we should see the first of Amazon stores in 2012.

What’s your take? Good move by Amazon?

Let’s make no mistake about it. The Wii U is going to be a gaming console and not an e-reader. But some people may want to read things on their device from time to time. That’s why the idea of adding an e-book store for the Wii U makes sense.

What’s your take?

The European Commission is not the only entity interested in investigating e-book pricing. The U.S. Justice Department has that on its agenda as well. The European Commission has already opened a formal inquiry into whether publishers have colluded to raise ebook prices with the help of a company such as Apple. Many e-book lovers have been complaining about some e-book prices being too high. The U.S. agency will look into whether Apple and other publishers are manipulating the e-book industry to their advantage.

We are also investigating the electronic book industry, along with the European Commission and states attorneys general

said the Justice Department’s acting antitrust chief Sharis Prozen. The agency has been keeping an eye on the rise of the agency model in this industry. The agency model has been quite controversial. While it does give publishers more control over their revenue, it makes it harder for e-book retailers to gain a competitive edge by optimizing their pricing schemes.

The investigation is in its early stages at this point. It will take a while before we find out what the next steps are.

The Ebook industry is a fast growing one at this point. With the rise of e-readers and tablets, digital books are becoming quite popular. Companies such as Amazon and B&N are already making a ton of money from e-books. According to Juniper Research’s latest report, revenues from e-books delivered to handheld devices could raise to $9.7b by 2016 (up from $3.2b in 2011).

The tablet market is quite young at this point. It is being dominated by the iPad but devices such as Amazon Kindle Fire are rising too. Juniper suggests tablets could be responsible for 30% of e-book sales in 2016. The adoption of EPUB3 can be a game changer in this industry as well.

Considering that publishing e-books is so easy these days, it is no wonder e-books are destined to become huge cash cows for big players such as Amazon. With tablets and e-readers becoming more popular every year, the future for e-book industry is bright.

Starbucks is quite popular for throwing all kinds of promotions to keep its customers coming back for more. The company has allowed its customers to sample apps in the past. In a partnership with iTunes and the iBookstore, Starbucks will be offering ebook “Picks of the Week” to its customers. The first title is Erin Morgenstern’s The Night Circus.

As part of the expanded Pick of the Week program, Starbucks is featuring an extended sample of the book The Night Circus from Erin Morgenstern. The Night Circus Pick of the Week Card will be available from September 13-19, while supplies last at Starbucks company-operated and select licensed stores.

Unfortunately for Starbucks lovers, they won’t be getting the full book with their purchase. Apparently, some customers missed the past that this will be only an extended sample of the book (has 330 out of 400 pages) . The offer on the “Pick of the Week” card may not mention this. But Starbucks’ blog post clearly does. Still, this is a very interesting promotion to keep customers coming back for more.

In the past couple of weeks, we have been covering Sony’s latest creation, Sony PRS-T1 reader. The days of Sony dominating the e-reader market are truly over. PRS-T1 has a touch screen and WiFi on-board. The device is not as expensive as some other Sony readers of the past. Users can interact with their books (pinch to zoom). A stylus is available for the product as well.

Sony knows that it is up against it with Amazon and B&N dominating the e-reader market. It has partnered with Pottermore to release a limited edition Potter-branded Sony Reader with special savings for Potter ebooks. Sony PRS-T1 will be up for grabs for $149. It is still a bit pricey though for what it offers. Will you buy one?

John Locke should need no introduction. The man is a superstar in the e-book publishing world. His book on publishing e-books has generated a ton of sales and gotten a ton of positive reviews. Not surprisingly, he has decided to sign a deal with Simon & Schuster to sell his work the traditional way:

Not only does John Locke write terrific novels, he clearly knows his audience and has a deep understanding of how to reach them. We are very excited that we can now help to expand John’s readership to include those millions of readers who still savor the joys of sitting down for a few hours of entertainment with a traditional paperback book. It is a win-win for all concerned,

said Simon & Schuster’s Stephen Black. John Locke’s story is worth following for anyone who wants to make a decent amount of money selling e-books. Now that he has managed to sell a ton of e-books on Amazon, Mr. Locke gets to brings his book to a book store near you. He will retain control over his ebook publishing so it is a win win. It will be interesting to see whether John Locke’s books will be as successful in the traditional publishing world.

Once you find a book that you want to share and use the above feature, Google will automatically attach a snippet with the book’s link and information to your post. If you have set up your circles properly, you can easily choose the people you want to share your favorite book with. The same effect can be done from your Stream page. Just copy the preview URL for your favorite book and share it on Google+.

Google+ has a lot of potential. It can truly make e-book reading/sharing more social. Amazon can learn a thing or two on how to develop a killer social network from companies such as Google.

When Amazon Kindle was launched a couple of years ago, there were a lot of people who were skeptic about the potential of the platform. Fast forward a couple of years and some authors are making a killing on this platform. Charlaine Harris is the latest author to join the “Kindle million club.” This is a distinguished group of authors who have sold over 1 million Kindle copies of their books.

When Amazon first unveiled the Kindle three and a half years ago, I would never have expected to be one of the first handful of authors in the Kindle Million Club. It’s been an amazing few years for myself and the Kindle both, but even more so to have my books available to my readers in ways that just a few years ago would have seemed as fantastic as vampires coming out of the coffin.

Kindle may have given popular authors another channel to use to reach out to their loyal fans but it is pretty powerful for independent authors too. Not everyone gets to sell millions of copies of their books. At the same time, Kindle has leveled the playing field a bit,  giving smaller publishers a better chance to compete.

Regardless of how far Amazon has come with Kindle, this is still the beginning. There will a few more twists and turns before all is settled in the e-book industry.

Amazon and B&N are not the only companies working to improve their e-book platforms. There are plenty of exciting start-ups that want to contribute to this space and come up with innovative solutions for the e-book industry. Mike Matas and Kimon Tsinteris are two former Apple engineers who left to create a new e-book publishing platform. Their platform allows for more sophisticated e-books with videos, audio, geo-located photos and interactive graphics.
These e-books take advantage of Cocoa Touch to bring a more interactive experience to e-book buyers. You don’t have to look past the above video to realize how powerful this e-book platform is. This is yet another powerful tool for independent authors to set their work apart from others.

I still believe we have not seen the future of e-books yet. But platforms such as the one developed by Push Pop Press should act as a teaser for what is to come in the next few years. These are exciting times for those who still read.