Amazon’s Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos appeared at the BookExpo America convention in Los Angeles on Friday and talked at length about the benefits of offering electronic books on Kindle.

“…one of the great things about electronic books,” Bezos said. is that “They don’t go out of stock.”

This came after Amazon’s earlier announcement that Simon & Schuster Inc. will make 5,000 books available for Kindle which will result in a the availability of about 125,000 Kindle titles.

Amazon quickly sold Out the new tell-all book, “What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception,” by former White House press secretary Scott McClellan. Bezos pointed out that though the hard copies are gone, the electronic copy is still available for download on Kindle at the reduced price of $9.99 versus the hard copy price of $15.37

To-date Kindle e-books account for approximately 6 percent of sales among all titles, but Amazon still will not give details about the number of actual sales.

It was only a week ago that Kindle’s price dropped from the initial $399 to $359 a $40 reduction in price which might just be an indicator that Kindle sales may have been on the down-slide…especially in these harsh economic times.

Even with this price reduction, Kindle is still about $60 short of its main competitor, the Sony Reader. But then again it does offer the wireless feature which you don’t get with the Reader.

On Wednesday Bezos told CNBC that with all the ongoing developments, Kindle is still in its investment phase…meaning that Amazon is still analyzing the future potential of the device.

Kindle came out in November and the price at that time was $399. Since then hundreds of Kindle has been sold. But, as expected, when a new product comes on the scene, it starts out at a somewhat “high” price only to be reduced as time goes by. Well, Kindle’s time has come and a lot of customers (early adopters) are not happy.

Many of them believe that Amazon owe them a refund and have even taken steps to contact the company asking for a refund. But, as expected Amazon said no. Only those who have bought Kindle within the last 30 days of the price cut will get a refund…which if you ask me, I think is reasonable.

Consider this. When you decided to buy Kindle, you agreed to pay the asking price at the time. So If the price dropped a few weeks later, you are simply unlucky. If Amazon wants to give you a refund, its at their discretion…they don’t have to because there is no law saying they should. So, the bottom line is live with it and move on. You have one hell of a device in your hand, enjoy it.

I, myself am an early adopter, and I don’t f.eel cheated. In fact, I feel blessed to have been a part of the first batch of buyers. I have learned so much about this device since it came on the scene that the $40 dollars does not even matter. Why? Because I know that this in one for the future. In fact, I am expecting further price cuts as time goes by and is looking forward to getting the second version Kindle at a much lower price.

That said, If you want to get a glimpse of what others are saying about this price cut, click here.

Last week at the SID Display Week 2008 show in Los Angeles, California, E Ink® Corporation, the leading developer and provider of electronic ink technology showed off its new segmented plastic display cells (SDC) which is 40% thinner than its predecessors and operates within a wider temperature range with improved flexibility.

Also, a new controller capable of animations, faster menus, typing, tablet screen sizes, and increased gray-scales was revealed along with an innovative electrophoretic color display.

What does this mean for the electronic reader market? It means that the leading electronic readers including Kindle, Sony Reader(PRS-505), iRex iLiad, Hanlin eReader V3, Bookeen Cybook among others, which are already using electronic ink technology for content display, could now have a reason to develop the next generation device.

As electronic readers move into the mainstream, there is much talk about which one is best. Each device offer excellent features in its own right, some a little more than others, but this may be the time for them to really take advantage of the new technologies and distinguish themselves from the other.

Who will move first and in what way? We will just have to wait and see. As for me, I am already imagining having a Kindle (my choice of electronic reader, thus far mainly because of the whispernet technology and the wide array of available content) capable of animations…and if Amazon is listening this may be the opportunity to improve on the navigation buttons, especially the “Next Page” and the “Prev page” ones, which as mention before, are really clumsy.

Whatever happens, the future of electronic readers look very bright.