ReadWriteWeb

Another sign of the success of e-readers and the changing publishing world: when USA Today publishes its first post-holiday bestseller list tomorrow, e-book versions of the top six titles will have outsold their respective print versions for the previous week. And of the top 50 books, 19 have higher digital than print sales.

It's the first time that the newspaper's top 50 list has had more than two titles in which the digital version outsold the print.

The book-seller Borders may become the first casualty of a changing publishing industry. According to reports, the company has been delaying payments to book publishers in order to help refinance its debt.

Borders is the second largest book retailers in the U.S., after Barnes & Noble, but even so, Borders says "there can be no assurance" that these refinancing efforts will be successful in keeping the company afloat.

After more than a year since we first heard the rumors, Google has entered the world of e-books. Today, the company launched its e-book marketplace with more than 3 million titles on the shelves that will be available to nearly anyone with a smartphone, laptop, tablet, netbook or desktop computer.

As e-book sales continue to grow, the bibliophiles among us are wont to ask "Hey, what about libraries?" Will we be able to check out digital versions of books from our local libraries and read them on our e-readers?

Yes, if your library uses Adobe Digital Editions for its e-books and if you have the Bluefire Reader app. The app, available for free for iPhone and iPad, allows you to access the digital version of the books you check out from your (participating) local library.

Describing itself as "part online bookstore, part social network," and "the world's first truly social e-reading platform," Copia has launched a platform designed to bring together book-buying, reading and discussion.

While there are several sites, such as Goodreads that let you share your reading lists, habits, and reviews with others, Copia wants to bring that sharing and collaboration within the e-book itself so that book discussions can be held in real-time, right from the pages of the text.

If you plan to buy an e-book as a gift for someone, the closest you've been able to get 'til now is to buy them a gift card and have the recipient download the title of their choosing. But Kobo has announced today its plans to allow people to actually purchase specific e-books as gifts.

In addition, Kobo will allow gift-givers to schedule when they want the e-book "delivered." Recipients can read the e-books on all platforms on which Kobo is available, from the Kobo e-reader to the iPad, iPhone, Android, PC and Mac.

Amazon has recently touted that sales of Kindle books are outstripping those of both hardcover and paperback editions. And a Forrester forecast earlier this week gauged that the sales from e-books for 2010 would hit over $1 billion. It seems as though the market for digital literature is strong.

But according to some publishers, if libraries start lending e-books, it could serve to "undo the entire market for e-book sales." Those were the words of Stephen Page, CEO of the publisher Faber and Faber who spoke last month at a library conference in the U.K. and announced the Publisher Association's new stance on e-book lending via libraries.

Worldreader, the non-profit that distributes e-readers to developing countries to improve literacy, is on something of a roll. Although the organization is not a proof-of-concept by design, it is by example.

Last month, the group penned an agreement with Amazon and African publishers to bring African lit to kids in Ghana, as well as support African writers and publishers. Now Random House has signed on for Worldreader's iREAD advanced pilot project in Ghana.

Just a few months ago, Amazon announced its Kindle editions were outselling hardcover books. Now, the Seattle-based online retailer also announced that for its top 10 best-selling books, its customers are now buying the Kindle edition twice as often as print copies, even as sales of print books on Amazon.com continue to grow. According to Amazon's VP for the Kindle Steve Kessel, Kindle e-book sales now also top print sales of hardcovers and paperbacks for its top 25, top 100 and top 1,000 bestsellers.

As the popularity of e-books and e-readers continues to increase, e-book piracy is also growing rapidly. According to Attributor, a company that develops anti-piracy and content monitoring solutions, the daily demand for pirated books can be estimated at up to 3 million people worldwide. The company's latest study also highlights that the total interest in documents from file-sharing sites has increased more than 50% over the course of the last year. Interestingly, e-book piracy is moving away from large sites like RapidShare to smaller sites and those that specialize in pirated e-books.