Amazon has lowered the Kindle 2 price from $359 to $299, as the company looks to push more of its small e-book readers out the door. The newest Kindle, the larger DX, remains priced at $489, and Amazon expects to start delivering them in three to five weeks. The Kindle 2 is shipping now.

Kindle books now count for a full 35 percent of Amazon’s book sales, which works out to about two Kindle books per device sold per month. It would appear that e-books are here to stay, given these huge sales numbers.

Bookseller Borders in the UK has launched an electronic book reader to compete with Amazon’s Kindle. The 6-inch e-book reader is produced by Elonex and retails for £189 ($311) exclusively at Borders. The Elonex reader launch goes hand-in-hand with the launch of the Borders E-book Download Store.

The Elonex eBook doesn’t appear to have wireless connectivity like the Kindle for downloading content. It ships with a data cable, which seems to be how e-books get downloaded to the reader. Like the newest Kindle DX, however, the Elonex eBook device does support reading in either portrait or landscape. The reader is also preloaded with 100 classics in e-book form, and Borders has 45,000 digital titles in its online store.

The Elonex reader handles Adobe Digital Editions, DRM-protected PDF, ePub-formatted content, and “other less widespread eBook formats and images/pictures.” An accessory pack is available for £29 that includes a leather case and a 4GB expansion card, type unknown.

(via engadget)

I am a big fan of e-books and a long-time customer of eReader, a Fictionwise company. One area of eReader’s business model that I’ve been less than happy with, however, is the pricing of newly released books. Its pricing has always been competitive with paper book releases, but not with Amazon’s new release pricing for Kindle e-books. That has all changed, according to an email I got from Fictionwise today.

Amazon Kindle customers have enjoyed paying just $9.95 for newly released books, and for good reason. That pricing compares nicely with hardcover book prices, as it is much cheaper — as it should be. The cost of producing e-books is obviously much lower than that of printing real, dead-tree books, and the Amazon pricing makes perfect sense.

I’ve purchased new releases from Amazon instead of Fictionwise for that very reason — the eReader price was simply too high. I was thrilled to get this notice today from Fictionwise that details its new pricing scheme:

• No e-book priced over $12.95
• All new e-books $9.95 or less
• All New York Times bestsellers $9.95
• Plus 15% rewards on all purchases

This is wonderful news and will save me big bags of money. It shows how great competition is for the consumer and also how good Fictionwise’s purchasing strength must be now that it belongs to Barnes & Noble.

It is the end of the week and that can only mean it’s time for my favorite thing, to share my week with you once again. This is the 45th week, which is almost a year of sharing the goings on at Mobile Tech Manor (MTM) with you. Wow, that’s a lot of sharing. This week has been busy on a lot of different levels and it’s kept me from playing with the toys as much as I like to. There was a new ThinkPad in the house, a new Android phone announced that looks incredible, and I spent quality time with the Palm Pre. Come on in and let’s talk tech.

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UPDATE: Fictionwise has indicated in the comments to the original post that the version currently in the App Store is still the old version. The new version is still waiting approval and release by Apple. We will provide an update when the new version has been released by Apple.

I am so dependent on eReader that when the iPhone 3.0 update broke eReader for that device, I was lost. That update made the bookshelf portion of the reader stop working, rendering it pretty much useless. The folks at Fictionwise let me know that they had submitted an update for eReader to Apple a week before the iPhone 3.0 update release and that they were not happy that it was taking its sweet time showing up.

I have been checking the App Store daily to see if the update for eReader would appear and today I was rewarded with the new version 2.1. I have installed it and am happy to report it is working fine with iPhone 3.0. The update is free, of course, so if you’ve been missing your eReader on the iPhone, you’d better go get it now.

This week has raced to a close as fast as can be, which means it’s time for another heart-to-heart about how the week was spent. It seemed to speed by at a dizzying pace, no doubt due to a new phone and updates to an old one. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about ultra-mobile PCs (UMPCs) and reviews and read three full novels. Sheesh, no wonder I’m tired. Come on in and let’s visit for a while.

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Broken under iPhone 3.0

This is the last post today about the iPhone 3.0 update, I promise. It is expected with any OS update that some apps will get broken; it’s the nature of things. I am enjoying the new OS on my iPhone 3G, but one of my most used programs is now broken: eReader Pro. The bookshelf part of eReader no longer works after the 3.0 update was applied. The reader portion of eReader works fine; it’s just the bookshelf that no longer works.

The folks at Fictionwise are aware of the problem and submitted a fix to Apple last week. Let’s hope that Apple will get this new version of eReader approved and released quickly. I can’t go a day without my e-book reading.

Google Android handset owners can expect eReader availability in “mid- to late summer,” according to TeleRead. They spoke to Scott Pendergrast of Fictionwise, which is owned by Barnes & Noble.

The company’s “eReader everywhere” plans to conquer the handheld world don’t stop with Android, either. It’s prepping to support the Palm Pre natively so that folks don’t have to drop $30 for the Classic emulator and use the PalmOS version of eReader (shown).

While I’m thrilled to hear this news, I also want to see Amazon create a Kindle app for all of the various handset platforms. The ability to read on the Kindle and then pick up where I left off on an iPhone makes it so easy to read everywhere. I’d like to see that same literary joy come to Windows Mobile, Android, S60 and the Pre.

I knew when I picked up the Palm Pre that I was going to do without reading e-books on the phone, at least for a while. There weren’t any e-book reader apps available for the Pre, certainly not eReader Pro, which I use on every device I touch. The good readers here lost no time in reminding me that eReader was available in the original Palm OS version and that it could be installed under Classic.

Classic is the Palm OS emulator for the Pre produced by Motion Apps that will let Pre owners run just about any old Palm app. The emulator is pretty impressive and creates an eerie Palm environment on the little screen of the Pre. It is available in the App Catalog and while expensive ($30) there is a 7-day trial available. I jumped right on it and installed eReader for the Palm OS.

It works, is about all I can say about it. The default font of the program in the emulator is pretty ugly, but it works, and it’s better than nothing. The Classic emulator creates the Palm OS environment completely, and that means the tiny screen. Only about 2/3 of the Pre’s gorgeous screen ends up displaying the e-book contents so paging is something done frequently. It’s better than nothing. I have to keep saying that because that’s about all I can say about it. The problem is the price — I don’t think it’s worth $30 for me just to run the “free” eReader app. It’s too bad. I miss my full eReader Pro. I hope a Pre version is in the stars.

Image courtesy eReader

There is now a Pre version of Shortcovers, a cloud-based e-book reader. I looked at it briefly but it feels like reading books in a browser and didn’t make for a good experience. Long-time reader Rodfather has looked at it and covers it on his blog with screen images of it in action.

As I’ve previously mentioned, I’m not an annotator when it comes to digital content on my Amazon Kindle. Maybe I just need the right use case to get started. A jkOTR reader has pinged me via a Twitter DM with one great example that’s worth sharing.

Eddie just read 1973’s “The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3,” which was turned into a movie in 1974 and then remade two additional times. The most recent remake is due out next week and Eddie plans to catch the flick. In order to help keep all of the characters straight and provide useful info, Eddie took notes for each on his Sony Reader PRS-700. Since the device has a touchscreen, all he has to do is tap a character name and his notes are called up. Even better: the PRS-700 has LED sidelights, so Eddie can read his character notes in a dark theater, if desired. With so many great stories from books going to the big screen, this slick idea could be pretty useful. Thanks for sharing, Eddie!