Nice recognition for John Locke from Amazon: he's the eighth author to sell over 1 million Kindle books, but more importantly he's the first independently published author to receive this distinction, selling 1,010,370 Kindle books using Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP).

As Amazon preps a line of Android-based tablets, a concern going forward has to be whether a colorful iPad competitor will undermine sales of high-end Kindles and whether Amazon has enough resources to actually support a real computing device.

Which eReader has the longest battery life? Amazon and Barnes & Noble are sparring over which device -- the Kindle or the Nook -- has the longest battery life, but the evaluating is being done under some misleading circumstances.

The Holy Grail for many is the popular extension of social networking to the eReader world. We're not close, but with their most recent market moves Barnes & Noble and Kobo are joining Copia and Goodreads in attempts to incorporate more social networking for readers.

With the introduction of the Barnes & Noble Nook Simple Touch Reader and a price reduction on a 3G Kindle the low end of the eReader market just got a lot more crowded, as critical mass for eReaders may be arriving.