Amazon have updated the Kindle4Mac reading app.
Some of the improvements in the latest update:

Use the built-in dictionary to seamlessly look up the definitions of English words without interrupting your reading.
Real page numbers for thousands of books in the Kindle Store. Now you can easily reference and cite passages, and read alongside others in a book club or class.
If several other readers have highlighted a particular passage, then that passage will be highlighted in your book.
Choose whether you’d like to browse your library in a tile view or in a list view.
You can download the app from Amazon or from the Mac App Store.

Amazon has updated its website to include a new section for apps, games, and other active content “Kindle Games & Active Content“. So far there are only 23 titles in this section right now, but that will obviously increase.

The other new category “Kindle Editions with Audio/Video” is for enhanced Kindle ebooks. It contains up to 250 at the moment.

On Black Friday Amazon is going to sell the Kindle 2 International for just $89. The Kindle 2 International is said to have a better screen contrast than the Kindle 2 U.S. model and thus comes close to the current Kindle 3. gen.

Amazon:
“Our previous generation Kindle uses the old E Ink technology (the same E Ink as in the current Nook). Our all-new Kindle [the Kindle 3 {UK: K3}] uses the latest generation E Ink (Pearl) for 50% percent better contrast, and is available at the everyday low price of …$139.”

The sale doesn’t start until 9:00 AM on Black Friday, November 26 and it will definitely be a limited quantity item.

The $149 B&W E-Ink Nook with the same screen (WiFi only) will sell for $99 on Black Friday as will the smaller Sony without wireless, both do not have 3G and thus of course no international wireless coverage via 3G network for free. In my opinion the Kindle 2 is definitely a better deal with its free 3G cellular wireless web browser, and the Text-to-Speech capability. Other than the Kindle 3.gen it doesn’t have a WiFi module though. But the 3G it got works almost anywhere in the world without fees or the necessity to find a WiFi hot spot that’s also free.

You will find the Kindle 2 3G among the other Black Friday offers at amazon.com/blackfriday as soon as the Friday starts, so be quick!

According to the New York Times this is going to be the “tipping point” holiday season for e-book readers. This is because it’s the first season that e-readers are going to be widely available for under $150 (even for under $100 in some cases). Thus a lot more e-books are going to be sold to read on those e-readers.

The NYT suggests that over ten million e-book readers will be in circulation by the end of 2010.

About 10% of adults plan to give an e-reader as a gift this year whereas last year that numbar was only 4%.

However the growing number of e-book readers may caus confusion to consumers.

While e-book readers are going to be a popular holiday gift, it appears iPads may not. Some analysts are predicting Apple may miss estimates of 6 million devices sold in the fourth quarter due to consumers cutting back spending or going with other devices instead.

It’s just that the even cheapest iPad costs several times as much as most e-book readers. So fewer people will be giving one for Christmas.

The color e-ink screen will first appear in an e-reader by Chinese company Hanvon. The new screen can display 16 levels of greyscale and 4096 colors (4bit). E Ink says  as usual with e-ink the display will be full viewable in sunlight.

The new screen is said to have a 20% faster rendering time. It is to be launched in China as an 3G/WiFi version in March 2011 for about $440.

The contrast ration of the display is only 10:1 which will mean that the colors will be pretty muted.This is because of the fact, that underneath works a common grayscale e-ink display with a color filter on top. Conclusion: if you want an E-Ink like color e-reader better wait for PixelQi or Mirasol entering the market.

Stephen King might be called an early adopter if it comes to digital publishing and e-books. As early as March 2000 King published the story “Riding the Bullet” as an e-book that could be downloaded from the Web onto hand-held devices or computers.

When the second generation of Amazon’s Kindle went on sale in February 2009, King wrote the novella “Ur” exclusively the Kindle platform.

So far “Ur” earned him $80.000 for a work of three days, as he points out: “I didn’t do ‘Ur’ for money. I did it because it was interesting. [...] It took three days, and I’ve made about $80,000. You can’t get that for short fiction from Playboy or anybody else. It’s ridiculous.”

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And here you go, just another Android tablet. The Next2, will sell for $200 and you can find all the details at their www.nextbookusa.com.

“If you like reading books, browse Internet, listen to music, view your favorite photo albums or videos, Next2 is your new best friend. Its sleek design, touch screen feature, 7 inches color display, WiFi, is just amazing. Next2 comes with a free, preloaded 25 books. [...]When fully charged, you can read up to 10 hours. Nextbook now partnered with Borders.com. [...] Its high resolution screen gives you sharp images especially when playing HD video. You can also find more fun with third party Apps available.”
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In a press release Amazon announces a Windows Phone 7 Kindle app for later this year. The app will include all standard Kindle features. It will also be able to sync via Whispersync to keep your place in the book you’re reading with your other Kindle apps or Kindle device if you own one or two. It will also incorporate new features built into a Kindle app for the first time, such as personalized book recommendations on your Kindle app home screen and the ability to send a book suggestion to a friend from any book in your library without leaving the app.
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According to Amazon, during the last 30 days customers have bought more Kindle e-books than hardback and paper books combined for the top 10, 25, 100, and 1000 bestselling books on Amazon.

In April-June 2010, for every 100 hardcover books sold by Amazon, 143 Kindle books were bought.

Steve Kessel, Senior vice-president of Amazon Kindle said:

“For the top 10 bestselling books on Amazon.com, customers are choosing Kindle books over hardcover and paperback books combined at a rate of greater than 2 to 1. Kindle books are also outselling print books for the top 25, 100, and 1,000 bestsellers—it’s across the board. [...] This is remarkable when you consider that we’ve been selling hardcover and paperback books for 15 years, and Kindle books for just 36 months.”

Amazon also announced more new Kindle 3, launched August 27, have been sold in the last two months than Kindle 2 were sold during the Oct-Dec 2009 quarter, which was a record-breaking holiday quarter for Amazon last year.

As Amazon’s press release headlines the new Kindle for Android update makes Kindle for Android “even better”.

The new features are:

. search the full text of Kindle books by voice or text,
. seamlessly look up words and phrases in Wikipedia,
. lock screen orientation in portrait or landscape mode,
. and view details about a book on Shelfari, the books-focused
. social networking site — “all without leaving the app.”

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