The lack of a real commercial presence in brick and mortar retail stores has long been on a knock on the biggest eReaders in the market – the Nook and the Kindle. With the Nook largely relegated to Barnes & Noble retail outlets and the Kindle lacking even the most basic of demo units in retail space, prospective buyers were often relegated to tracking down friends and acquaintances who owned one of these sanguine devices. And when your ability to sell a device relies largely on the satisfaction of its tactile feel, that can throw a real wrench into your operations.

That’s why it was big news in April when Barnes & Noble announced that they’d brokered a deal to give the Nook bona fide shelf space at Best Buy’s 1,070 retail outlets across the country. Best Buy had previously been the exclusive home of Sony’s line of eReaders, but customers can now check out kiosks that promote the virtues of the dual-screened Nook.

Not one to be left behind, Amazon immediately turned around and inked a deal with upscale value retailer Target. You have to imagine my shock when I actually saw one of the Kindle’s kiosks at a local Target store several days before I saw a press release announcing the deal. I like to think I’m top of all the latest eReader news; to have something that big snuck under my nose seemed like a major coup. In actuality, my local store just happened to be one of the 102 South Florida stores that they chose to be among the first of what will eventually be a nationwide sweep.

It’s evidence that, despite the launch of the highly-lauded Apple iPad, the Nook and the Kindle are still slugging it out for market share in the dedicated eReader category. In fact, recent reports for both companies involved have been encouraging.

Amazon reported a 68% increase in net income for the first quarter this year, a shockingly high increase given the unemployment rate and general (ill) state of economic health. The Nook had a slightly more direct validation of its popularity, with a report out of Digitimes Research indicating that, of the 1.43 million eReader units that shipped to retail in the month of March, as many as 53% of them were Nooks. The sheer fact that Barnes & Noble hasn’t sent out any press celebrating this fact seems to indicate that there is a disconnect between units shipped and units sold, but the overarching point is that the eReader market is every bit as robust to start this year as could have been expected.

Am I the only one who is going to feel at least a little sad that carrying my Kindle 2 around in public won’t make me a mini-celebrity? With so many people purchasing eReaders and the major eReaders now freely available in big stores for people to try, nobody is going to stop me in the coffee shop or the airport to ask if they can try my Kindle! I guess the phase of the early adopter is finally ending…