bestsellers

The Kindle e-reader, the Nintendo Wii, and an Asus Netbook were among the top tech items for Amazon customers in 2009.

The retail giant touted three "Best of 2009" lists on Wednesday, revealing the best selling, most wished for, and favorite gift items chosen by Amazon consumers for the year. The company also introduced its Bestsellers Archive, which can show historical popularity among several categories, including print books, Kindle books, music downloads, movies and TV shows, and video games.

Amazon has been relentlessly proclaiming the popularity of its Kindle device, though it just as steadfastly has declined to … Read more

Like e-books, but hate paying those exorbitant prices? E-bookseller Fictionwise (which was recently acquired by Barnes & Noble) is offering a deal that's pretty sweet: a 100% rebate on all New York Times bestsellers.

Let me clarify: You get a 100% Micropay rebate. What's Micropay? One way to buy e-books from Fictionwise is to set up a Micropay account, which is basically just a debit account (not unlike Microsoft's Points system for Xbox and Zune).

Basically, you add funds to it (in $5 increments via check, credit card, or PayPal), then draw on those funds each time … Read more

Yes, Sony and Google have teamed up to offer 500,000 free e-books on the Sony Reader. Free is nice, and half a million is an impressive number, but lots of free and cheap e-books can wreak havoc on your database and best-seller lists--just ask Amazon.com, which found itself with Adolf Hitler's "Mein Kampf" briefly sitting atop its best-seller list for legal thrillers in the Kindle Store, experienced earlier Thursday.

The Kindle Edition of "Mein Kampf" isn't free on Amazon. What's interesting is that there are actually two versions: one costs $1.58, and the other costs $1.60.

Both are fairly popular, but it's the cheaper version that captured the No. 1 spot on the legal-thriller list, then bizarrely disappeared within minutes of our capturing the screen grab. (Amazon, which updates its rankings hourly, had yet to respond to a request for a comment when we went to press, but we'll add any response we get when and if it comes).

Amazon also has some issues with competing Kindle best-seller lists. For instance, when you click on the Kindle Books link at the top of the page, you get a list of best-selling titles with stuff like Steve Harvey's "Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man" and "The Shack" listed at the top (they cost $9.99 and $8.24, respectively). Meanwhile, it appears that Robin Hobb's free "Assassin's Apprentice" is the true No. 1 book in the Kindle Store.… Read more