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It won't be long before we start seeing ads in e-books, a business professor and a former book editor wrote in a Wall Street Journal editorial today.

Growing e-book sales and the opportunity for targeted advertising mean space in e-books is ripe for corporate messages. Add rapidly falling e-reader prices and the planned Google e-book store and the pressure is on for publishers and retailers to increase revenue from digital books.

Amazon announced today its Kindle application for Apple mobile devices including the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch, now offers embedded video and audio clips within its e-books. At launch time, there are just thirteen titles sporting the new functionality, including a cookbook augmented by video demos and a nature guide called Bird Songs that lets you read about - and hear - various bird calls.

But this is only the beginning, says Amazon. "We look forward to seeing what authors and publishers create...using the new functionality," said Dorothy Nicholls, director of Amazon's Kindle unit.

Before the e-reader wars, Amazon's Kindle and Barnes & Noble's Nook e-readers were $259. Then B&N dropped the Nook to $199 and lowering its lower-end Wi-Fi version to $149. Amazon then dropped the Kindle's price to $189. All the while, Borders stood in the background paring its nails. Border's e-reader, the Kobo, has stayed steady at $149.99 and its smaller version, the Libre, at $119. Borders believes that's the right place for the e-reader to be.

"According to Boston Consulting Group, high prices continue to be a barrier to eReader adoption. The consumer sweet spot for eReader cost (is) between $100 and $150. This positions Borders for strong consumer adoption and market penetration."

Barnes & Noble just announced the launch of a Wi-Fi-only version of its Nook e-book reader. This new version of the Nook will retail for $149. In addition, B&N also dropped the price of the 3G-enabled Nook to $199. Besides being Wi-Fi-only, the new version of the Nook is virtually identical to the Nook 3G. It will come with the same set of features as the original Nook, including the ability to lend some e-books to friends and use B&N's "Read in Store" feature to browse complete books on the Nook while using B&N's in-store Wi-Fi network.

Who doesn't want to read faster? Sadly, if you do a Google search for "speed reading," a lot of the sites that come up either try to sell you very expensive software or feel like a scam. Currently, however, Apple is featuring QuickReader in its iTunes store, which brings a much-needed breath of fresh air to the world of speed reading apps. At its core, QuickReader is a fully featured e-reader app with a connection to Feedbooks, but the app is also a great tool for learning to increase your reading speed.

Borders is getting ready to jump into the e-book market. The company, which is second-largest chain of bookstores in the U.S., started taking pre-orders for a $119 e-book reader from Aluratek today. Last month, the company started taking pre-orders for the $149 Kobo e-reader. Borders also announced that it is on track to launch its long-awaited e-book store and mobile e-reader apps for the iPhone OS later this month. While Borders' competitors like Barnes & Noble and Amazon have long made e-books a central part of their business strategies, Borders has struggled to enter this market.

Dedicated e-readers like Amazon's Kindle and Barnes & Noble's Nook are coming under increasing pressure from mobile phones and tablet devices like the iPad. According to the latest research from Informa Telecoms & Media, sales of e-readers with broadband connections will peak in 2014, as users decide to opt for multi-purpose devices like the iPad. According to Informa, the best way for e-reader manufacturers to survive is to focus on cheap devices that don't feature built-in wireless connectivity.

Good news, Android owners! One of the iPhone and iPad's best mobile applications, the Amazon Kindle app, is coming soon to phones running the Google Android mobile operating system. Like all Kindle products, the Android app will include Amazon's Whispersync technology, which synchronizes reading progress, notes and bookmarks across devices including Kindle brand e-readers, desktop software and mobile applications.

Online retailer Amazon will begin highlighting Kindle's paid e-books following a small but significant change to its bestseller list due out in "a few weeks": it will split its top-sellers into two lists, one paid, one free. Currently, the Amazon Kindle Bestseller list is a mix of free and paid books and, not surprisingly, the free books dominate the list. Even today, as this article goes to press (so to speak - is that still valid terminology for the Web?), only two of the top 10 books lists are paid. In the top 20, only three more paid books can be found.

Google is getting ready to launch its own e-book store and challenge Apple and Amazon. According to The Wall Street Journal, Chris Palma, Google's manager for strategic partner development, announced the timetable for the launch of the company's e-book store during an event at Random House's Manhattan offices earlier today. Google Editions, as the new store will be called, will launch in late June or July.