D Streitfeld reported in yesterday’s NYT that Amazon, in an effort to lower the retail price of e-books, removed over 4,000 e-titles distributed by the Independent Publishing Group. The conflict point is Amazon’s focus on revenues from the hardware Kindle purchases, against the book industry’s goal of profit from intellectual content-in hard cover, paperback and [...]

M Meece writes in today’s NYT Personal Tech column of the burgeoning number of e-reader accessories now available. (“Dressing Up an E-Reader for Style and Comfort” pB9). Amazon.com itself lists more than 2,00 products for just the Kindle [!?!]. The overall market range from inexpensive add on lights for E Ink technology based units such [...]

The NYT reports today that ProPublica is partnering with Open Road Integrated Media to publish in e-book format extended versions of reportage they have commissioned. These offerings, priced at under $5.00 @, will have the previously published pieces augmented by “…videos, maps, documents, photographs and interviews with journalists”. ProPublica is entering this novel marketwhich so [...]

Author and business professor R Stross writes in today’s NYT (“Publishers ve Libraries: an E-Book Tug of War” p B3) that publishers have not yet settled into an industry-wide model re e-book sales to public libraries. Realistically concerned about the e-loan effect on royalties and profits, Hachette, and Simon and Schuster, won’t sell any e-titles [...]

D Streitfeld, in a f/u to his previous article on the faults of the Kindle Fire, ran the cricisms by computer how-to author Peter Meyers. His comments: The Fire suits its target audience of non iPad users/nontechies admirably well, albeit it needs fixing and further refinement. It would not, per Mr Meyers, have passed Apple [...]

D Streitfeld reports in today’s NYT that 1st responders to the Kindle Fire are not uniformly raving about it. Among other issues, they complain that the touch screen is difficult to manuever, and that web loading is too slow. An “over-the-air” update to existing units is due out soon, and a new, improved Fire may [...]

J Kanter reports in today’s NYT that the European Commision is “investigating possible collusion between Apple and five large publishing houses…” re the pricing of e-books. This follows an American class action suit filed in August. It alleges that (with Apple) some publishers raised the cost of their e-books to stifle consumer interest in Kindles, [...]

D Pogue in today’s NYT waxes enthusiastically on the new members of the Kindle family. Perforce, the Fire gets pride of place, overshadowing its siblings (and Amazon’s competitors). It won’t replace the iPad for those who want all the ease and functionality of a regular tablet computer, plus the Apple apps, but at the loss [...]

A Ihnatho wrote a magisterial review and comparison of the iPad & the Kindle Fire in today’s Sun Times (Chicago/suburban). Too detailed to summarize here, it can be found at http://newssun.suntimes.com/business/8816567-420/review-kindle-fire-is-no-ipad-killer-but-it-is-a-killer-device.html. Happy reading!

As anticipated, Amazon heated up the tablet world, as well as the e-book world on Wednesday. Jeff Bezos, its CEO and founder, introduced several new products .Pride of place goes to the Kindle Fire, a direct challenge to Apple’s blockbuster iPad. The Kindle Fire is ca 2/3 the size and weight and only 2/5 the [...]