E-book sales during the first six months of 2010 were 183% higher than for the equivalent period in 2009, according to the Association of American Publishers. Forrester Research estimated that 11 million Americans would own a digital reading device by the end of September 2010.

It looks like e-book readers are actively encouraging people to read more than normal. Owners of the Amazon Kindle Reader are reported to buy 3.3 times more books with their Kindle than they did prior to having their reader.

There's no doubt that Amazon is the biggest e-book seller at the moment. They currently have 700,000 Kindle books for sale on their website – and there are a further 1.8 million books that can be downloaded for free due to the fact that they are now out of copyright. Amazon has, very cleverly, made a whole range of free apps available for a variety of different devices which lets users read Kindle books without a Kindle reader. This could conceivably impact upon Kindle reader hardware sales - but Amazon are clearly happy to accept this in order to secure sales of Kindle books.

The sales of e-book readers grew exponentially during 2009 - heavily influenced by the release of the Amazon Kindle 2.0 during February of that year. They are still a niche product and are just beginning to spread beyond early adopters. E-book reader price reductions, provoked by the launch of Apple's iPad which can be used as an e-book reader (among many other things), have certainly helped to make e-book readers more attractive to potential customers.

The Kindle became Amazon’s most gifted item ever over the 2009 festive season. Currently, it's the top selling item on the Amazon site - and likely to remain so for the foreseeable future. The launch of the third generation Kindle at the start of August has been a good response to the iPad – and the Kindle is now selling faster than ever.

There can't be much doubt that the public has now gotten used to the idea of e-books and e-book readers. For the moment it seems that there is sufficient room in the market for both the specialist Kindle and the multi-functional iPad. Whether or not this situation will continue, or whether there will be a move to a more versatile type of e-book reader when Amazon eventually develop color e-ink technology displays, remains to be seen. However, the e-book genie looks to be well and truly out of the bottle and the future will only see more and more e-books being sold.