The biggest improvements over the Amazon Kindle is that the Nook has a full color touch-screen, similar to an iPhone and the ability for memory expansion through a Micro SD expansion slot.  Some smaller improvements is that you can receive free Wi-Fi in Barnes and Nobles book stores, you can transfer the books to your iPod or iPhone without any additional software, and it uses the Android operating system.  Whether all of these improvements will translate to sales has yet to be seen but the Nook Ereader looks promising.

With 21 billion dollars in sales, Amazon.com is easily the largest player in the book industry, more than 20 times larger than its next competitor, Barnes and Nobles (resource).  It’s no wonder then why their e-book reader, the Kindle, is such a hit.  The Kindle offers wireless access to 120,000 books, magazines, newspapers, and blogs all at the touch of a screen.  It is light and compact to the point where its’ dimensions are close to a book.  You can read from their screen that is easy on the eyes as well as listen to the book in audio form.  The Amazon Kindle is now receiving competition from some other e-book readers, such as the Sony Reader, but it is the biggest reason why we have seen such a large increase in e-book sales since 2007.

The other reason for such an increase in sales in the industry is due to authors getting their own websites and selling their e-books on them.  This allows authors to cut out the middle man and increase their profits because they don’t have to pay for a publisher to print their book.  A great example of a authors selling their books online is lulu.com.  They make the publishing process automated and leave the selling up to the authors.

This e-book trend is unlikely to slow.  E-book readers and the internet are getting more popular by the day.  This means that even books, one of the least technological forms of entertainment and ways to distribute information, can’t escape technology.