Amazon Kindle 3GInteresting to see two bits of news in the press today about the Amazon Kindle. First there’s the report that Amazon Kindle ebook sales has outstripped traditional paperbacks in the US during the final quarter of 2010. This trend has apparently continued in to January 2011 too, with 115 ebooks being sold for every 100 paperbacks. (Source: HERE)

Obviously the improved pricing and accessibility of the Kindle versions must have helped, but the other piece of news out may explain things more clearly. Apparently the Amazon Kindle is also the most popular ebook reader too (Source: HERE) – and this has been attributed to its availability across multiple devices. This means that you can access the Kindle store and the books contained within it, using your Amazon Kindle and continue reading the same book, at the place you left off at, using your iPhone, iPad or PC. This does only work with books purchased through the Amazon Kindle store though – so no use if you’re using the Calibre software to send news/books to your Kindle; these won’t be ‘synced’ up.

Personally, I think the price of ebooks is still too high. As I’ve said before the incremental cost of distributing a digital copy of a book is negligible. Yes, publishers and resellers have to contend with the cannibilisation of existing (retail) sales of traditional books, but they should also recognise the growing market and consumption of electronic media. Lessons should be learnt from the music industry so as not to drive people to the torrent networks and encourage piracy of books on a similarly large scale.

There are already a handful of torrent sites catering specifically for ebooks, some of which are trading incopyrighted material. The difference with this medium though is that unlike music and movies, ebook file sizes are much smaller, which means that those inclined could acquire a virtual library in a matter of hours.

The Digital Economy Act, still being drafted by the government, will attempt to discourage people from illegal downloading, but as has been evidenced time and time again in the past, alternatives will be found. What form that will take and whether it will impact on the sales figures discussed earlier are yet to be seen.