When New Hampshire author Kenneth Tingle self-published The Girl in the Italian Bakery, a gritty memoir about growing up poor in the inner-city, he didn’t know what to expect. Tingle had to approach bookstores himself to even get the book stocked. It exploded in the local area, selling over 5000 copies in ten square miles.

Amid the turmoil of the book publishing industry there are still many new start-ups that venture forth. Clayborn Press, LLC is one such newcomer. They come onto the scene with a fresh look at the industry and are poised to take advantage of the advances in technology.

BooksOnBoard and iPad now offer a full-sized reader solution for customers on the iPad with full backward compatibility for iPhone customers. In partnership with Amazon’s Stanza eBook Reader, BooksOnBoard provides customers a world class tablet-based eBook reading experience.

“The Stanza iPad reader provides our customers with a bright, easy to view eBook reader” said Bob LiVolsi, president and founder of BooksOnBoard, “And it’s completely backward compatible so customers that have invested significant dollars for our eBooks on the iPhone can now read them on the iPad as well as Nooks, netbooks, laptops and PCs”

The new Stanza puts to use one of the iPad’s distinguishing features: its large screen size and image clarity.

Barnes & Noble, Inc. unveiled a new dedicated eBook reading device and cut the price of their eight-month old reader, the Nook 3G, from $259 to $199, to put it well below the price of Amazon’s Kindle International, which remains at $259.

Priced at just $149, the new Nook Wi-Fi includes the same features of the Nook 3G — including a color touch screen for navigation, an E-Ink display and Wi-Fi connectivity — but lacks 3G connectivity.

Today’s reader can “curl up with a good book” in a variety of non-traditional ways — library books, e-books, or books bought online. All these choices, however, threaten the health of traditional brick-and-mortar book retailers. Global market intelligence firm Mintel says that e-book options like the iPad and Kindle, the popularity of Amazon.com and even local libraries pose significant threats to traditional book retailers.

Online book sites have cornered a significant slice of the market share that once belonged to traditional bookstores from 2007-2009, as they enjoyed a 7% increase in sales at the same time traditional retailers were hit with an almost 10% decrease.