Amazon have done pretty well in sales of the third-generation Kindle wireless reading device since it was launched in August 2010. And last month, they reported that sales of e-books have now surpassed sales of paperbacks in the US.

In the UK, you can buy a wifi or 3G/wifi Kindle directly from Amazon (of course) and from retailer John Lewis. Now, add Tesco to the list as this huge display I saw today at a Tesco Extra store in Reading illustrates.

The price of the Kindle in Tesco is exactly the same as the price at Amazon. The advantages, then, of buying it in Tesco are:

1. You get it immediately
2. No delivery costs
3. You get Clubcard points as well

The face of retailing continues to change and the traditional places you expect to find certain types of products is changing, too. Supermarkets like Tesco have long been places where you can walk out of the store with 50-inch plasma TVs, the latest smartphones and other desirable gadgets nestling among the fresh veggies and others items in a typical shopping trolley. Indeed, I bought an Xbox 360 and Kinect bundle in a Tesco store a few weeks ago.

I wonder what the ‘Tesco effect’ will do to sales of e-books for Kindle in the UK. How long will it be before we see similar statistics as those recent ones from the USA? Not long, I’d say.