The recent surge in the popularity of both e-books and e-book readers has been heavily influenced by Amazon. Amazon’s Kindle reader first appeared on the market in November of 2006 and subsequent updates followed with the launch of the Kindle 2.0 in February of 2009 and the August 2010 launch of the upgraded third generation Kindle. The summer of 2009 also saw the launch of the large format Kindle DX, which was also updated in August 2010.

Many business analysts forecast that, regardless of Amazon’s influential role in the development of the e-book and e-book reader market, the release of Apple’s iPad would effectively kill off the Kindle. However, after the third generation launch – accompanied by some price cuts – Amazon sold out of Kindles (yet again). It seems that consumer demand is still extremely high for Amazon’s top selling product.

For some people, the change to e-books has been easy to accept. Others seem to love physical books as much as they love reading. However, for many people the convenience of being able to carry large quantities of reading material around with them, coupled with the ease of operation offered by e-book readers, has turned out to be an attractive proposition. Recent cuts in e-book reader prices, prompted by the release of the iPad, have made e-book readers a much more attractive option for many readers.

Amazon recently announced that they are currently selling more Kindle books than conventional hard cover books. As e-books use no paper or ink and have no delivery fees, they tend to sell at lower prices, which certainly helps. It can only be a matter of time before e-books start to sell more than paperbacks.

Apart from the price, the ease of purchase of e-books is another driving factor. Readers can download a book to their Kindle in under a minute, whatever the time of day, just as long as they can connect to the Amazon Kindle store.

One possible stumbling block for many readers was a reticence to be “tied” to any particular e-book reader. Amazon seem to have overcome this rather nicely by releasing an absolute plethora of free “apps” which allows Kindle books to be read on a variety of different devices. At the moment, Kindle books can be read on the PC, the Mac, the iPhone, the iPad, the Blackberry smart phone and any device which runs the Android operating system. It’s a smart strategy from Amazon’s point of view. Not only does it remove the fear of being tied to a particular brand of hardware but each new app acts as a separate retail outlet for Amazon’s huge selection of Kindle books. At the moment, around about 20% of all Kindle book sales are estimated to be aimed at non-Kindle hardware.

All things considered, it looks like e-books are here to stay and that they will gradually account for a higher and higher percentage of book sales. It also looks likely that Amazon will remain as one of the driving forces in the digital publishing arena for some time to come.

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