Amazon realizes that while its Kindle devices might be selling really well, there are a whole lot of people who prefer to read their books on an iPad.

Because of that reason, Amazon has released an iPad optimized version of its Kindle Store that looks and feels like a native app. No installation required though, simply visit: http://www.amazon.com/iPadKindleStore on your iPad to get the full experience.

The web app does a fantastic job of utilizing all of the extra real estate on the iPad’s screen, as well as allowing you to touch your way through the library of available titles to read on your Kindle app.

When you visit the page and log in, you’ll find the books that are recommended for you in all of its big juicy cover flow-esque glory. As you swipe your way through titles, you can tap on one of them for more detail. Once again, the web app uses the iPad’s extra real estate to show you detailed descriptions and user reviews.

After you purchase a title, you can read it within the Kindle app on your iPad or via Amazon’s online Cloud Reader, which is also optimized for the device.

➤ Kindle Store for iPad

Meltwater Group released a study today about tablets based on conversations it has tracked on the web using its tool called “Meltwater Buzz”. While the iPad is the clear winner this holiday season, it looks like the Kindle Fire and Nook were the most discussed tablet for girls this year. Take that, Apple.

The Nook and Kindle Fire seem to be a hot topic for girls, perhaps because it’s less about apps for them and more about books and other content that is readily available on both platforms. It could also be because of the type of advertising campaigns the two companies are using.

Barnes and Noble has been running the below obnoxious Nook ad on TV, featuring Jane Lynch from “Glee“, which most certainly attracts a female audience, much like the show does.

If online conversation translates into Christmas wish-lists, it could be a heck of a holiday season for Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

This infographic shows conversations on blogs, and it’s most certainly not all about the iPad:

Buying things online is nothing new, although we’ve seen many companies take a different approach to things. Sneakpeeq for example, lets you see an item and “flip the tag” like you would in a physical store.

Shareagift is a site that lets you set up a gift page for someone and ask your friends to chip in to buy it.

It’s a beautifully designed site, and a concept that could support a variety of different use-cases. For example, you could chip in to help someone with their medical bills, or buy some flowers and candy for someone going through a tough time. What Shareagift does well is let one person set up the gift page, and use their Paypal account to accept the money from others to purchase the gift.

The Gift page

Setting up a gift page takes only a few minutes. You are asked to enter the name of the person who is receiving a gift, what the gift will be, what occasion it’s for, and a personal message to those you’re asking to chip in.

When you set up your account, you’re asked to enter your Paypal email address. Shareagift automatically verifies the Paypal email address as acceptable or not, so there aren’t any extra steps or authorizations needed. It’s really well done.

The gift ideas are infinite, they could be for a wedding, a baby shower, or just because. The group nature of the service could really spark a new type of commerce online. Buying someone a Kindle for $149 could be difficult for you, but if you asked your friends to chip in, you might be able to get the item faster. The other great part is that the gift is from everyone, and that’s a great feeling.

Shareagift asks you how many people you think will give money towards the gift, and then calculates a suggest amount of money to give, which is a great touch and turns the decision maker into a no brainer for your friends.

Getting your friends involved

After you’ve set up your gift page, you can share it with contacts by importing them from most popular email services like Gmail and Yahoo! mail. You are also given a static link to share with people to make it more social.

We were lucky enough to discuss Shareagift with its CEO Justine Angelli:

TNW: What made you want to create Shareagift, and tell us about your team?

Justine Angelli: It was my aunt’s birthday and my cousin was collecting money for a laptop that she really wanted for Christmas. My cousin had to front the money (which she struggled to do) – and then chase up with all their friends and family to get the money. They lived in the countryside and it wasn’t that easy for everyone to drop by with the cash. I thought there had to be an easier way to sort it – and from there the idea for ShareAGift was born.

The team is super. Young, dynamic and live and breathe ShareAGift. We have American, Portuguese, English, Australian staff members to name a few nationalities . . . And having fun in the office and enjoying what we do every day is immensely important to all of us

TNW: What is the goal of Shareagift? And how do you make money, per transaction?

Justine Angelli: We hope that for every online user over the age of 18, whenever they think about gifts – they think of us. We take a small contribution of $1 that goes towards our running costs every time a friend or family makes a donation to a gift. Generally speaking it would cost more to buy wrapping paper, sellotape or even take the metro to look, buy and wrap a gift

TNW: Do you have any great stories/favorite gifts purchased for people by a group that you’d like to share?

Justine Angelli: I know of 2 girls who work together who both are in need of minor surgery and are setting up pages at the moment to help their friends collect money so that they might make that happen. Another is a friend of mine who is collecting money for their honeymoon.

TNW: Does group buying actually speed up purchasing intent, thus making your site a place to sell MORE items than say an Amazon or other E-Commerce site?

Justine Angelli: Yes. A number of people who come to the site still aren’t sure what item/ or experience they want to give the person they are raising the money for. We successfully get the money and the present suggestion sorted in the one hit. Saving them stress!

TNW: Do you have any partnerships with retailers?

Justine Angelli: We do through our gift wizard – ‘Find–A-Gift’ that is incorporated in the site. Our retailers span across the US and UK.

TNW: What does the future hold for ShareAGift, new features, apps?

Justine Angelli: Birthday reminders, automated pdf gift cards which will include all messages posted on the gift pages, automated gift page reminders, personal gift wish lists, youtube video submittal of those receiving their gifts . . . the list goes on.

Of course with a service like this, or any group service that accepts money to a single point of contact, there is a lot of trust involved. If you’re sharing a gift page with your friends, they more than likely already trust you. Unfortunately, something like this could be used for a social media scam if someone wants to pretend they’re raising funds for something or someone who doesn’t exist.

My advice would be to only participate in Shareagift if you know the person you’re buying a gift for, and the person who is the single point of contact for the funds.

With all of the talk and excitement about Amazon’s new “Kindle Fire“, the company has dropped the price of the original Kindle Keyboard edition to $139, or $99 with ‘special offers’. This was a popular option for purists who don’t like doing things on touch screens. Tactile keyboards still have a place in technology, and now you can grab a Kindle Keyboard edition for under $100. You can pick up the 3G version for $189, or $139 with special offers, respectively.

If you’re keeping score, this now gives Amazon Kindle a lineup of:

• Kindle
• Kindle touch
• Kindle keyboard
• Kindle DX
• Kindle Fire

We’re excited to see what Apple has up it’s sleeve on October 4th, because it seems like Amazon and Apple are destined for a head-on tablet and mobile collision.

Click the image for a larger version.

Jeff Bezos of Amazon proclaimed today:

“From Kindle, FIRE is born.”

The Kindle Fire has a 7-inch display and sells for $199, compared with $499 for Apple’s cheapest iPad. You can Pre-order Kindle Fire today and it ships November 15th. This device is an advanced version of Amazon’s current E-reader, the Kindle, and runs Google’s Android OS.

The Amazon Kindle sports the following new features and services:

• 18 million movies, TV shows, songs, magazines, and books
• Amazon Appstore – thousands of popular apps and games
• Ultra-fast web browsing – Amazon Silk
• Free cloud storage for all your Amazon content
• Vibrant color touchscreen with extra-wide viewing angle
• Fast, powerful dual-core processor
• Amazon Prime members enjoy unlimited, instant streaming of over 10,000 popular movies and TV shows

The Web has been rampant with stories of malware making its way into the Android Market. From infected Angry Birds add-on apps to malware which can evade anti-virus detection.

This isn’t the only problem that has been plaguing Android’s Market, with pirated e-books making their way into the store and onto users Android tablets and phones.

A quick search in the App Market, and I could have easily loaded a bunch of pirated books onto my Android phone, including the entire Song of Ice and Fire series, which inspired the HBO TV show Game of Thrones; the Lord of the Rings series, and the entire Twilight Saga.

What are publishers facing?

Pirated e-books available in the Android App Market appear to be limited to pop culture titles that are likely to be in demand, particularly amongst a younger audience, with many users happy to download them qualm-free.

The apps seem to be slipping through with the cunning use of an incorrect category, with quite a few of them quietly hiding in the Sports Games section.

The Android App Market is far from alone in this problem. Amazon’s self-publishing platform has been facing a surge in both spam and pirated books, and has probably been the one platform that has been hit the hardest, due to an unmoderated submission process.

With a shameless copy-paste-retitle method in use, it’s incredibly easy to get users to download a cheap $0.99 book, none the wiser that it’s pirated.

Even Apple’s near-watertight outfit has fallen prey to pirated books. Last year, four Japanese publishers complained to Apple that pirated copies of their books were available in Apple’s iBookstore.

Is JK Rowling making a big mistake?

So what does it all of this mean, particularly in light of JK Rowling’s latest venture, Pottermore, in which she has entirely cut out the middle man and is bringing e-books directly to her fans, DRM-free no less.

In a genius move, albeit for the wrong reasons, Rowling retained electronic rights to the entire Harry Potter series because of a personal concern over pirating. Having had a change of heart, she will be making the entire series available on her own site. While the books will be DRM-free, each copy will carry a unique digital watermark.

The irony in Rowling’s choice can’t be avoided. A digital watermark won’t prevent copyright theft, but it does leave a direct trail right back to the original buyer.

A digital watermark is unlikely to be a big enough motivator to stop e-book pirating in its tracks. Instead, vigilance will be the only real weapon against what could potentially become the biggest e-book piracy landslide this side of the 21st century.

What can be done?

JK Rowling aside, there is the fear that, because these platforms make it so easy for pirated e-books to reach the end-user, publishers will take to antiquated methods that did nothing for the music industry, and simply multiply them to the nth degree.

Google’s method of action is far less intrusive, but at the same time, very ineffective. They wait until they receive a complaint, after which the pirated e-book will be taken down.

Amazon themselves have already come up with a method to discourage piracy, by allowing users to borrow e-books from bricks-and-mortar libraries in the USA. Sadly, they were also quick to shoot themselves in the foot, by crippling third party sites built around the idea of lending titles between users. This method of course does little to stop spam books reaching Amazon’s self-publishing platform.

Does it matter?

Ironically, these very platforms – Apple, Amazon and to a lesser extent Android, which have spurred on e-book piracy, have also forced publishers to think twice about how to approach the electronic medium because of their popularity.

It was probably hard to conceive of Napster’s effect on the music industry before it took off, but the likelihood of the book industry going in the same direction is slim. E-books are by no means new, and our guess is if there was going to be an explosive increase in pirated e-book bestsellers – it would have happened by now.

Pirated e-books will probably continue to be available in two main types. Books that are tied in closely to blockbuster movies like Twilight, or so-called spam books, where anyone can access royalty-free content, such as Wikipedia articles, and re-use them any way they want.

Consumer awareness is the most important tool that can be used in the battle against spam books. A simple Google search can often lead readers to the exact same content online for free.

Amazon is what you’d call a true market disruptor. When it launched in July 1995, the online e-tailer began to revolutionise the way we shop, and it has put many traditional booksellers out of business.

And in 2011, it seems that Amazon is up to its old disruption antics yet again, as it announces that it’s now selling more Kindle books than print books.

When Amazon unveiled the Kindle back in November 2007, many doubted that it would catch on. There was an argument that people simply like paper books. But then, people said something similar back in 1995, when they argued that customers prefer to try before they buy. How wrong were they?

Kindle books had already surpassed hardback books back in July 2010, and in January this year Amazon announced that its Kindle books were also outselling paperbacks. So that means Kindle books are more popular than all print books…right?

Well, I certainly thought so. This news was widely reported back in January by ourselves, the BBC, CNET…you name it. So I was surprised to learn that Amazon has just made another Earth-shattering announcement that, well, Amazon.com is now selling more Kindle books than print books.

I’m really not sure why this announcement has been made, but from what I can tell it’s something we already knew, no?

Update:

Of course, it was a rather simple explanation after all. Yes, Amazon’s Kindle books are now outselling both hardbacks and paperbacks combined. I knew it had to make sense.

Amazon loves to show off when it is doing well, and the new Kindle is affording the giant the opportunity to strut its stuff up and down the internet’s streets. The new Kindle, Amazon is crowing, is a massive hit with consumers.

Speaking through their usual cloud of ratios rather than actual numbers, Amazon announced that “It’s still October and we’ve already sold more Kindle devices since launch than we did during the entire fourth quarter of last year,” and that “it’s clear that this is going to be the biggest holiday for Kindle yet–by far.”

All those Kindle sales are really beginning to pay off in terms of book sales. While Kindle ebook sales have yet to overtake total paperback sales on Amazon.com (they have taken over hardcover sales), for the top 10, 25, 100, and 1000 bestselling books on Amazon, Kindle ebooks are outselling all print books (hard and softcover).

If you were waiting for the ebook revolution to finally take place, it is now. This is the moment that technologists promised ten years ago, when electronic book sales would begin to have a massive impact on new book sales.

Amazon also reported that for the first nine months of 2010 compared to the same period of 2009, the company sold three times as many ebooks. That outpaced the larger ebook market’s growth of 193%.

To counterbalance all this Kindle hype, do recall that Apple sold 4.2 million iPads last quarter and we might be seeing the first full color Nook just around the corner. This war is far from over.

The last time we brought author Joe Konrath to these pages a minor firestorm ignited over exactly how we were parsing his data. He remains a controversial figure in the writing and publishing worlds, but today our topic is far less incendiary.

Konrath has just passed the 100,000 eBooks sold mark, and he has shared his numbers as to on which platforms the books were sold. To put the most important number up first, Konrath sold 78,412 of the 100,000 eBooks on Kindle.

He had harsh words for the iPad as an eReader (he is mostly referring to iBooks here, making a common non-technologist mistake of conflating the iPad and iBooks platforms):

iPad has proven disappointing, and I blame the iBookstore interface, which is very user unfriendly. I assume it will get the kinks worked out eventually, but it is currently torture to navigate and browse the iBookstore. Still, almost 400 sales in just a few months is better than nothing.

If you tally up all of Konrath’s eBooks sales that went through an Apple products, “compared Kindle sales, I’m [Konrath] selling 70 to 1 on Amazon over iPad [Apple].”

Again, these are numbers from one fiction author, but in terms of transparency Joe cannot be beaten. He shares his revenues, sales, timetables, and everything else that we could ask for. Take the numbers with a grain of salt also because the sample size here is not as large as we could hope for, but numbers this open for 100,000 sales are quasi-impossible to match.

What do you think? Is iBooks hard to use? Can it catch Kindle, or is iBooks doomed to be Apple’s Zune, a me-too product that will never catch up?