Amazon.com (AMZN) will be offering higher royalty payouts for books and material headed for its popular Kindle reading device in anticipation of the Apple (AAPL) tablet, which most likely will be announced this Wednesday at the "Product Event" recently unveiled by Apple.

If Amazon (AMZN) was comfortable with its spot atop the e-reader market, it just got a wakeup call from Barnes & Noble (BKS). The brick-and-mortar book retailer's e-reader, the Nook, which hasn't even hit stores yet, is in pre-order nirvana right now. The first run for the Nook occurred at the end of October (the product was introduced on October 20). These buyers were told the reader would ship on November 30. High demand resulted in backorders, so the next wave of pre-orders was scheduled to ship on December 7. Now, a third group will have to wait until December 11.

This product is on fire, and it still isn't even on shelves yet.

Mary Ellen Keating, a spokeswoman for Barnes & Noble wouldn't reveal how many of these devices have been pre-ordered, but she did say, "Demand for the product in our stores and online has surpassed our expectations." She also noted, "We are working hard to meet demand for the holidays."

For retailers, the crucial season is on its way. Blow the Christmas rush, and next year starts off on a miserable foot. Success, of course, also delivers a healthy dose of momentum -- and a little bit of wiggle room, important in what will continue to be a tough economy through at least the first half of next year. For booksellers, now contending with a new variable in the form of digital readers, e-readers will play a major role in defining the winners and losers. So far, it looks like Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) is off to a great start, and it will take some genuine innovation for the competition to chip away at its market share.

Barnes & Noble (NYSE: BKS), once the leading names in literary retail, is expected to release its own e-reader this week. It will look a bit like Amazon's Kindle, according to Reuters, but with a touch screen intended to make the reader's experience easier. The price hasn't been disclosed yet, but rumor has it that it'll be higher than the Kindle's $259. BKS is staying mum on its plans in this space. There are others in the space, as well, including IREX Technologies, which is a spinoff of Royal Philips Electronics (NYSE: PHG), Asutek (tk: tk) and a project called FirstPaper that has Hearst behind it.

Best Buy, Inc. (NYSE: BBY) wants to make the U.S. consumer believe that the e-reader is the "must-have" gadget of this holiday season. To that end, the nation's largest consumer electronics retailer has launched a special website (not active yet, apparently) where it will make the e-reader category and associated gadgets headliners of this holiday season's gift giving.

It's more than just Best Buy believing this. Analyst firms like iSuppli are behind the agenda as well. Best Buy's holiday gadget selection will feature more than 120 products priced between $25 and $75, with brands like Sony, Leapfrog and Sharper Image.

In a rather nostalgic touch (it seems), Engadget is reporting that Amazon will be releasing an "e-book" reader soon. This makes sense as many industry pundits have predicted that the printed paperback and other related books may soon become a thing of the past as electronic versions of these same books become more popular. Why shouldn't they? The cost to distribute an electronic book is virtually nil, just slight bandwidth, and the more two-way interaction and consumer relationship building that can happen, the better.

But will Amazon itself be pushing publishers to release new books in both a paper format and an electronic format? If so look to Amazon to have the market cornered for at least for a little while on the e-book universe. Sure there are already e-book products from several companies, and there have been for years (Franklin and Sony come to mind). But the standards aren't there, the power of a bookseller like Amazon.com isn't there, and the publishers aren't yet there. Amazon's sheer scale in the bookselling world could probably make this happen, yes?

The Amazon "Kindle" -- as it's being called -- looks like something from 1989, but alas, this is probably just a prototype design. Or, maybe Amazon is going retro to make the transition from old, worn paperbacks to e-book reading less and less of a medium transition. With built-in EV-DO wireless (the 3G tech used by Verizon Wireless and Sprint Nextel), Amazon must want it's e-book consumers to have easy access to the upcoming crop of e-books.

Just connect to Amazon.com over the wireless Internet and choose your reading poison. Interesting stuff here, and if Amazon can be successful with a large-scale reading environment transition like this it'll be a pioneer yet again. As an AMZN shareholder, what are your thoughts? Does this have a chance at succeeding if Amazon can tilt the reading paradigm in its favor?