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When the concept of libraries lending out e-books first came about, the idea had its skeptics. Some in the publishing industry worried that the practice could eat into e-book sales, while others questioned whether such a system would be popular or effective among consumers. Some recent statistics suggest that library e-book lending is taking off.

Driven in large part by the proliferation of tablets and e-readers, digital book lending is on the rise, according to OverDrive, a leading supplier of digital content to U.S. libraries. The company, which partnered with Amazon for its Kindle lending program, reported recently that it saw a 130% increase in traffic to its "virtual branch" websites last year. OverDrive works with 18,000 libraries to offer e-books and other digital content to members.

Remember Choose Your Own Adventure books? They pioneered the idea of the book as a game, an interactive form of reading that let the reader control the direction of the story. You reached a decision point in the plot, the book presented options, and you turned to a different page depending on your choice.

A startup called Coliloquy launches today to bring that concept to the e-book market starting with four titles. They're young adult romance novels, each written by an established author who took a bet with this new format. These teen fantasy stories will be a testing ground for whether interactive texts could be a new frontier for all kinds of publishers.

Amazon has released a new 'Send to Kindle' feature for PC users. It's a downloadable extension for Windows that adds a "Send to Kindle" option when right-clicking on a file in Windows Explorer or in the print dialog in any application.

Files sent with Send to Kindle go to the user's Kindle Library, and they can be downloaded on the e-ink Kindle models as well as the iOS Kindle app. The last-read page, bookmarks, notes and highlights are synchronized automatically, except for PDFs. The Kindle Fire is not listed. Support for Mac is "coming soon."

Amazon reports today that the Kindle E-Book Lending Library now offers over 75,000 books, boosted by the launch of the Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) Select program for independent publishers. The KDP Select program launched in December, and Kindle customers borrowed 295,000 KDP Select titles that month. The top authors in the program earned thousands of dollars on top of their regular monthly sales.

Amazon increased its monthly funding for KDP Select from $500,000 to $700,000 this month after the strong showing. KDP authors earned $1.70 per borrow. The top 10 KDP Select authors saw a 30% increase from lending on top of the royalties they earned from sales of the same titles. Amazon's end-run around Big Publishing shows promise for authors.

Amazon has launched a more touch-friendly, Web-based iPad Kindle Store. A tablet-optimized Kindle store was available through the HTML5 Kindle Cloud Reader Amazon launched last August, but the new iPad Kindle Store is a standalone Web app. Upon visiting amazon.com/iPadKindleStore from Safari, a pop-up prompts the user to add it to the home screen. This is the most seamless way for Kindle users to buy books on the iPad.

Apple's in-app purchasing rules prevent e-book sellers from offering stores in their native apps (without giving Apple a 30% cut). The route around that was to include a link to the Web store inside the native reader app. Last July, Apple forced Amazon and other e-reader apps to remove this link, so users of e-book platforms other than Apple's iBooks must buy their books in the browser, in a separate place from where they read.

We wind down the top trends of 2011 with one that's perfect for the holidays. Just as the frantic, real-time nature of the social Web hit fever pitch, the market trends this year made way for "content shifting." It's the simple idea of saving your articles, videos and podcasts for later.

With the rise of the smartphone and tablet, all kinds of content can be saved until after work or school. Content shifting helps us concentrate on the tasks at hand. It also reformats it for more enjoyable experiences. Now that the Web is no longer limited to our desks, content shifting allows new media to take their rightful place on the couch.

Amazon is making a move to highlight its wealth of music, books, TV shows, movies, apps and games today with the release of a new "best of" digital store. Got a shiny new Kindle Fire for Christmas? Amazon wants you to download, download, download to your heart's content.

For Amazon, this is an "of course they would" moment. The company loses money on the hardware for the Kindle Fire and basically breaks even on other Kindle products. Amazon then must push consumers to its digital products. What better way to do so then by highlighting some of its best paid apps and expensive books?

Amazon updated the Kindle app for iOS today, giving iPad users the ability to access publications from the Kindle Newsstand. Amazon's Newsstand offers over 400 full-color publications to Kindle Fire users. Apple's own Newsstand offers more app-like experiences from many of the same publishers.

In addition to the 400 magazines and newspapers, the iPad app can also now display "print replica textbooks," which are more like giant PDFs than interactive applications. All iOS devices, not just the iPad, now support the Send-to-Kindle feature, allowing users to send documents to the device by email. They can also open PDFs from email or the browser in the Kindle app.

Amazon really wants to attract more independent authors to its publishing platform. It also wants to add competitive muster to its Kindle Store for e-books and the new Kindle e-book lending library. In a move designed to achieve both goals, the company today announced the launch of KDP Select, a program that gives Kindle Direct Publishing authors an incentive to participate in Amazon's e-book lending initiative.

If indie authors are willing to sell their e-book exclusively through Amazon for 90 days, those books become available through the Kindle Owners' Lending Library. Each time a writer's book is loaned through the system, they get a cut of revenue on top of the royalties they get from book sales.

Have you noticed that the cost of some new e-books seems to be a few dollars higher than it was before? The U.S. Justice Department certainly has and they're investigating why that is and if it's legal. Specifically, the DOJ is looking into whether Apple and major publishers colluded to set e-book prices in a manner that would violate antitrust laws, the agency confirmed yesterday.

Media reports have pointed to the existence of such an investigation since last year, but yesterday an Justice Department official publicly acknowledged it, saying, "We are also investigating the electronic book industry, along with the European Commission and the states attorneys general." That's right, Europe and a handful of U.S. states are concerned about e-book pricing as well.