There's a battle raging (okay, it's actually being handled rather quietly through proper legal channels) right now between publishers and authors over who owns the digital publishing rights of older books. In one corner, you have the authors claiming that because ebook rights were not set explicitly, they retain the right to publish. In the other corner, you have the publishers claiming that ebooks fall under the category of "books" and as such they own the rights.

You can see how this gets messy. In 2002 a Manhattan judge ruled in favor of the authors. saying that ebooks are separate from books. But that's just one case, and there's sure to be more legal action to follow.

You can read more at the link. It's yet another interesting conflict over who owns what, brought about by the gadgets we create. [NY Times]

Today's initiative has been variously billed as "iTunes for Magazines" (correct philosophically, but wildly overstated) and "Hulu for Magazines" (incorrect, since Hulu is free). Basically you can now go to this digital storefront and buy all your favorite Conde Nast, Meredith, Hearst, Time Inc., and News Corp publications, to read on your "portable digital device" of choice. Your crappy mobile phone, or iPhone, or upcoming Apple tablet, or, hey, Time Inc. is making its very own tablet, & ad infinitum.

And, of course, this is not the only "digital storefront" thing—Hearst, a partner in this venture, is also going forward with its own personal digital storefront called Skiff , and there are similar services already operating, although, hey, there's not dominant iTunes-type player yet, so you never know.

This could be a successful venture. Then again, it could fade into irrelevance in months. Somebody will make the dominant digital storefront for content like this, just like someone will make the dominant digital reader. Magazine publishing companies, one would think, are likely to get smoked by someone like Apple in this particular sector. But they think it's worth the gamble, after watching what happened to the music industry.

But it'll take a few years. How much would you pay to read Sports Illustrated on your E-reader right now? You don't have an E-reader. And you can read Deadspin for free. So, you'd pay nothing. Changing that dynamic is what media companies need to worry about.

And here's Time Inc's announcement to employees, just because we have it:

December 8, 2009
To: Time Inc. Employees
From: Ann Moore
Re: New Digital Venture

Today, five leading publishers including Time Inc., Conde Nast, Meredith, Hearst and News Corporation announced the formation of a new venture to develop a digital storefront and a common reading application that will allow consumers to enjoy their favorite magazine and newspaper content on any platform they choose.

We already know that the next generation of mobile devices will be loaded with color touchscreens, flexible displays, video capabilities and other features that will make them ideal for consuming rich content and an appealing environment for advertisers. These devices will allow us to combine the best of what consumers love about magazines – quality, curated journalism, engaging content and beautiful photography – with the speed, convenience and portability of the latest technology.

While Time Inc. is pursuing a number of initiatives that will help us expand our current digital businesses and develop new products and revenue streams, our participation in this venture is an important part of our efforts. You'll be hearing more about it in the coming weeks and months.

In the meantime, for a look at some of the work Time Inc. is doing around portable devices, check out the demo Sports Illustrated developed, which will give you an idea of how our digital content might be enjoyed in the near future.

www.si.com/tablet

A.M.

First of all, these guys haven't done anything yet. They've just announced their plans to play nice and work together. Those demos we've seen? Those were done by individual companies, so they need to figure out a way to make everything standard.

And just where will these digital magazines be distributed? On the theoretical Apple Tablet? On the Kindle or Nook? None of these are great options. Apple, Amazon and Barnes and Noble are all pretty deeply in the content-delivery business, and they may not be all that excited to have these publishers invading their territory. And, well, the Kindle and Nook are in no way designed to handle the sort of multimedia package that we've seen demos of.

And all of this is based on the idea that people will actually be willing to pay for these "digital magazines," which I don't think they will be. The magazine industry seems to think that by taking content that works perfectly fine on websites—text, images and video—and mushing them into a weird version of page-based magazines, people will treat them like the old format and will be willing to pay for them. I doubt it. The traditional magazine format was designed for paper magazines, and that format doesn't make sense digitally.

But hey, maybe I'm dead wrong. They could make a super-slick program that works on upcoming tablets, making reading magazine articles an exciting venture that people will suddenly be willing to shell out money for. I just doubt it. [All Things D]

The New York Observer reports that the company formed by publishing's Superfriends—perhaps Legion of Doom is more appropriate—will format and publish rags that "work across multiple digital platforms, whether the iPhone, the BlackBerry or countless other digital devices," though they're not developing their own reader hardware.

Which is where it gets a little sticky, says one of the Observer's sources: "The really, really hard part is that you've got so many different kinds of devices running on different operating systems. And how do you handle that? The consortium provides one point of contact for the consumer. When you come to the main store, you can get the content any way you want."

In one sense, the venture will be very much like Hulu—a separate company from the publishers, run by Time's John Squires, who's been behind the whole initiative, as All Things D originally reported. It's like Hulu for another reason, in that it's more like a disjointed confederation whose motto is hanging together or hanging separately since every publisher clearly rolling their own, separate gambit as well: We've got the tabletized version of Wired (Conde); Heart was planning its very own ereader at one point; and Time too.

It feels like the early, disjointed days of digital music, at best. There's a good chance stuff you buy now (well, soon) isn't going to work forever. Time's thing. Maybe Apple's thing. Some kind of Adobe formatted thing. Amazon and Barnes & Noble's thing. One of them will stick and we'll have our digital magazines preserving an old print format in a digital way—hey, the publishing industry might even save itself—but I'm just going to cower in a corner with free stuff in my web browser until this all gets sorted out. [Observer]

The first shot at Amazon reported by the WSJ is kinda weak in the grand scheme of things: Yesterday, Walmart started selling 10 "hotly anticipated" books, like almost-President-of-the-United-States Sarah Palin's Going Rogue for 10 bucks. The paper kind. For the same price as the pretend books you buy on a Kindle. Amazon fired a volley back, matching the price. Walmart went to its classic $9 position this morning. Ker-plow.

This is apparently deeply frightening to already publishers. Why? Because once people expect a book for 10 bucks, they're not gonna pay $28 for it, which would seriously alter the economy of the publishing industry. And I mean, they're already deathly afraid of the very uncertain future of publishing. A standard $10 price would make books feel more disposable—granted, this is the future that's coming with ebooks anyway.

Walmart actually still makes a bit of money at that price—and obviously Amazon does hawking ebooks for that much. The people this would seriously screw are independent booksellers, who couldn't scrape by on margins that low. Which makes you wonder how they're going to continue existing in a world where we're all buying books, for cheap, on tablets. Amazon and Walmart's likely just the beginning of the end. [WSJ Image via Ryan Conway/Brave New Films/Flickr]

Here's how it'd work: There'd be a new company running a digital store for all of the publishers where people could buy and manage their magazine subscriptions that would be delivered on "any" device. Supposedly, Time Inc's gotten Conde Nast (publisher of Wired, Vanity Fair, etc.) and Hearst (Popular Mechanics, Esquire, etc.) ramped up about the idea as well, which would launch in 2010.

Great, except that it's not going to work. As Peter Kafka points out, they have to convince people to sign up for another service—not an easy feat if they're already tangled up with a Kindle or Apple. Especially if this new service will be just magazines, and not include newspapers. And there's no way Amazon or Apple will let the publishers tie a separate service into their devices, pissing in their pool. The whole point of the Kindle is that Amazon controls the delivery method, and that's likely how Apple's tablet will work—downloading magazines and newspapers and textbooks through iTunes, just like iPhone apps or iTunes music.

Which basically leaves the the publishers with a handful of generic readers they could get their goods on, meaning they're screwed. At this point it looks like all roads to ereaders people will actually buy to pass through Amazon or soon, Apple. Sorry magazine dudes: Give in, give up or get out. [All Things D]

Morrison made a name for himself through frequent participation in Kindle online communities and self-promotion online, and will see both The Ark and a future novel in the same series published in hardcover in summer 2010. This happens to musicians all the time; they blow up on MySpace, sell music on iTunes and finally some suit at a record company takes notice and signs them.

This is the first such example we're hearing about from a digital author, and it's really great news both for Morrison and the publishing industry as a whole, including Kindle: It adds legitimacy to the Kindle's self-publishing tools and it's a sign of recognition that electronic reading, in some form or another, is a valid format, which is a fact many (myself included—I was just being new-media snarky about the death of print) have denied at some point or another. Congratulations to Boyd, and let's hope it encourages more underground writers to publish on Kindle and get their stuff read. [Crunchgear]

According to Ubergizmo, the device will measure in at 8.5 x 11 inches, and is capable of browsing docments in PDF format as well as Word, Excel and PowerPoint files. As well as packing a battery that lasts "days not hours," the device has wireless connectivity, though Plastic Logic is quiet about exactly what type.

[Ubergizmo and NYTimes]

Since Orwell spent some time as both journalist and teacher, I suspect he may have found the idea of blogging his journals intriguing, on an educational level. As for what he'd have thought of our society, it's impossible to tell, though perhaps the proliferation of surveillance cameras (making "Big Brother is watching you" seem ever truer) would've struck a chord or two with the man.

I have a sneaky feeling he'd have disapproved of the Giz, though. Consider this guideline for good writing, one of six from his book Politics and the English Language: "Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent." [Orwell Diaries via Laughing Squid]

Pheras HilalOh, you know we responded...

You'd like for us to do your work for you?

Okay. Please provide us a monthly stipend of $25k a month in operating expenses and we'll just write your damn magazine. I'm sure as a journalist/writer you're flush with venture capital.

Or how about you replace those sections of your magazine with high-resolution screen shots of our website with giant, comedy-sized quotation marks around each image.

That would be pretty 'Cutting Edge.'

Joel Johnson

P.S. Also, I'll need a pony with a built-in HDTV.

Save it E-Whitney. Tell that to your buddies, and I'm sure you'll have a great laugh for the day. God didn't spare me with time on my hands, episodes of Wayne's World and an internet connection so that I can grow up to be a geek techie as yourself. I have better things to write about in my life than to waste it all on stupid things plugged to my fucking USB port, hence I asked for your help. What a loser. And you keep on dreaming about getting half your annual income from me.

Pheras Hilal