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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.

Arnaud Nourry, the CEO of the world's second largest book publisher, Hachette Livre, says that the current pricing trends for eBooks may soon kill the hardcover book as we know it. In an interview with the Financial Times, Nourry says that he worries that the combination of the $9.99 price for bestsellers and the fact that Google now offers millions of out-of-copyright books for free could destroy profits for traditional publishing houses. Nourry is especially worried about the fact that Amazon is currently selling eBooks at a loss and that the company will soon demand that publishers will lower their prices so that it can actually make a profit from selling eBooks in its Kindle store.

Sony today announced that it will sell a wireless eReader device for $399 by Christmas. The Reader Daily Edition will be powered by AT&T's 3G network. That in itself is interesting news, especially given that Barnes & Noble announced a similar device in partnership with Irex yesterday. What's gotten somewhat lost in all the excitement about the hardware, however, is that Sony has also partnered with a number of independent booksellers in the US. These include over 200 members of the American Booksellers Association, as well as BooksOnBoard, Net Galley, and Portland, OR-based Powell's Books, the world's largest independent bookseller. In addition, Sony also plans to make it easier for users to check out eBooks from their local libraries.

The Free Software Foundation's Defective By Design campaign just added the Amazon Kindle to its list of DRM-related offenders. The organization started a petition against Amazon for restricting readers' access to their own books and effectively discouraging reading options. Complaints include Amazon's switch to publisher-controlled text-to-speech disabling and the removal of several pre-purchased works from the device. Most recently, 17-year-old Justin Gawronski filed suit against the company for removing George Orwell's 1984 from his Kindle and rendering his electronic notes worthless.

Sony just dropped the price of all new releases and New York Times bestseller titles in its eBook store to $9.99. In addition, the company also announced two new hardware eReaders: the Sony Reader Pocket Edition with a five-inch screen for $199 and the Reader Touch Edition ($299) with a touch screen and Memory Stick and SD card expansion slots. The new devices will be available by the end of August.

While Sony has always offered very attractive eReaders, the prices in Sony's eBook store were a deal-breaker for many who had been considering buying a Sony eBook reader. Amazon generally charges $9.99 for an eBook, but until today, Sony often asked for $11.99 or more.

According to a report in the New York Times this morning, Google is getting ready to enter the eBook market by providing publishers with an infrastructure for direct-to-consumer sales. The Times reports that Google discussed this initiative with publishers at last weekend's BookExpo in New York. According to the times, Google is mostly interested in creating an architecture that would enable publishers to do direct-to-consumer sales (with the checkout handled by Google Checkout, we assume). But there is also no reason to believe that this initiative could not include some kind of electronic store, maybe on top of Google's controversial Google Books service.

Today, Amazon finally released an iPhone-specific version of its Kindle eBook store, which makes it a lot easier to browse and buy books while on the go. Sadly, though, Amazon did not release a new version of the Kindle app with a built-in browser (yet). So users are still being kicked out of the iPhone app and taken to Safari in order to browse the store and complete transactions. A button that takes users back to the Kindle app only appears after a purchase in Safari has been completed.