SEATTLE, WA – Amazon says its new, less expensive Wi-Fi enabled Kindles are selling faster than any other Kindle launch. Barnes & Noble recently saw revenue gains led by electronic book sales.  The iPad displays electronic books beautifully, and the e-reader revolution seems fully upon us.

In the four weeks since the new models were introduced, Amazon says the new Kindles outsold more than any other product on both Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk.

The new Kindles started shipping to customers this week. We’re eagerly awaiting ours.

E-books going full steam ahead

The e-book revolution is gathering steam daily after a decade of hype and numerous launches of various e-reader devices.

Now, however, the Kindle, Barnes & Noble’s Nook, and Apple’s iPad are leading a full fledged move into the era of the electronic book.

Amazon says electronic books formatted for the Kindle are outselling hardcovers and the company says it sold three times as many Kindle books in the first half of this year as it did in the first half of 2009.

Barnes & Noble recently posted their best revenue numbers in some time largely due to a growing share of the e-book market. Still, the e-book revolution holds many questions for the fate of the big box book retailers and Border’s is already faltering.

While we have a room full of hardcover and softcover books, we welcome the e-reader revolution. Not only do they save space, they make an entire library portable as never before.

Value-added devices

They have the added value of easily keeping your place, the ability to make and keep notes, built in dictionaries and Wikipedia access on some, and in the case of the new Kindles, the ability to connect to the Internet via Wi-Fi.

An e-reader can hold more books than our entire home library (about 3,000 on the Kindle, Amazon says), which puts an end to the heavy book bag some omnivorous readers carry everywhere.

The flowering of the electronic book era poses some ongoing questions, though.

How will it affect on-demand online publishing ventures such as Bob Young’s Lulu.com? (We plan to ask him that in an interview prior to his appearance at this year’s third annual Internet Summit in Raleigh, NC,, Nov. 17-18.

They are bound to have numerous effects on the traditional publishing industry. Amazon is currently selling top hardcover books for $9 in Kindle versions and less for many books. Many traditional hardcovers are priced at three times or more of that figure.

E-book readers have also already stirred up some controversy regarding whether they should be considered computers at coffee shops and restaurants that forbid computer use at certain times so they can keep turning over tables.

Moreover, there is bound to be some dueling over e-reader formats and shakeout among device providers.– Allan Maurer

To contact TechJournal South Editor & Writer Allan Maurer: Allan at TechJournalSouth dot com.