Simon & Schuster sees what's happening: Real people are buying ebooks now, and the market, in its infancy, is forming habits and expectations. Like bestsellers for just 10 bucks—bestsellers that sell for 30 dollars in their hardcover form. Or should, anyway, but the devaluation of verbiage has been trickling over to real books too, since nobody fucks with Walmart, and they've been aggressively price matching, resulting in all out price war.

It's the worst of all possible scenarios: Publishers aren't just making less money on ebooks, but on the paper ones too. And people will get the crazy idea in their head that that's what books are worth, the same way we all think a song is worth 99 cents. (Or, um, nothing to the unscrupulous.)

So Simon and Schuster's plan is to plug ebooks into their own special place in the publishing cycle: Four months after hardcovers. Meaning you'll have to wait 1/3 of a year after a book's published to read it on a Kindle or Nook or tablet or whatever. It establishes a value hierarchy, that looks, as the WSJ points out a lot like the theatrical release cycle for movies. It's true, the movie industry has fared better than the music industry in preserving the perception of value of their content. But if you look, digital movies have slowly crept up to be same-day as DVD. They're just really damn expensive—15 bucks.

It's hard for the publishing industry to do the same thing—charge a premium for the digital version—since they're trying to get this whole ebook thing off the ground, not to mention the experience just isn't as good as a real book, at least not yet. They're still trying to hook people. It's not an easy place to be, at least not until the ebook experience stacks up more definitively with the real book one. Making people wait 4 months to buy books on their Kindle will, at best, simply hurt ebooks, because no one wants to wait for new stuff, least of all, words. At worst, it'll put people off of buying those books entirely—they'll wait for them to hit nook at $10, but'll have lost interest by the time it comes out. And then the publisher's still screwed. More to the point, like the music industry found out, and as the movie and TV business is struggling with, the new model is going to break the old one, and arbitrary limitations, will fall like the dead trees they print things on.

I do not envy you, Mr. Publisher Man. [WSJ]

The new consumption model grands book purchasers (you) the right to lend a book to their friend—all digitally—but it's still being discussed as far as how many lends people can have and to how many people. Publishers want the number low, and B&N want the number high.

There's also talk of in-store try-outs when you bring your B&N eReader in, but might suggest that the device will only have Wi-Fi and not 3G, like the Kindle. [NYT]

I wonder if he's thought about a Kindle? I know I wish I had time to read real books. I'm glad he found time to write about his 1979 memories for Giz though, back when all you could read were like, things made out of paper, or poo scribbled on a wall, like the Marquis de Sade. [Yahoo via Neowin]

Ninomiya-kun can analyze and distinguish about 2,300 Japanese characters from actual paper books. Impressive, but in an age where text-to-speech is already showing up on ebooks, one has to wonder if technology like this is really necessary. Currently we have like what...less than 1% literacy rate among robots? Reading is fundamental people. [Yomiuri via Crunchgear]

The new mobile Books site is great (it's at books.google.com/m): it offers access to the full catalog of free works, downloadable in fast chunks for reading on the go. Granted, you have to have an active net connection (there's no offline viewing potential), and the catalog does not include Kindle's new releases. But the interface is great, and it remembers your recently viewed books and bookmarks where you left off when you revisit them. Pages are downloaded 15 at a time so you're not constantly flipping to the next one.

But back on the subject of the Kindle, the New York Times is reporting that Amazon is close to offering a Kindle-like service for mobile phones, with full access to their extensive e-book store and offline reading on the small screen.

I'm still not at all excited to read books on tiny (or even moderately sized screens), but I know a lot of people are, so this is pretty cool. We'll see if there's any word on a mobile Kindle store on Monday, when we'll be covering Amazon's expected announcement of their next-gen Kindle hardware. [Google Mobile Blog, New York Times via Lifehacker]

So The Algonquin offers a complimentary Kindle "loaded with your favorite book" during the duration of your stay at the hotel. Just as I've found iPod alarm clocks to be, somewhat surprisingly, pretty handy when I travel, a Kindle preloaded with something decent for me to read sounds pretty great, too.

I stayed at a place recently with an Xbox 360 hooked up to an HDTV over an SD cord. It had no games and couldn't connect to the internet. What a tease! I had to leave the room to do stuff and everything. [The Algonquin via Engadget and Image]

[Ideaholic via TFTS]

I've spent enough time looking for crumpled receipts—my usual placeholders—buried deep in books; I want this thing and I want it now. To top it off, it even comes with its own tree-shaped holder to place your entire Abracadabra collection:

Now, do I need this many unused bookmarks? Probably not. But the pot really ties the room together. [Yanko]

[Dixau via TechPin via DVICE]

Product Page [Via ubergizmo]

If you're not reading undercover, it keeps its light shining just on the page and away from your bedmate, letting you read on and on into the night without bothering anybody but yourself. Its four AAA batteries last 40 hours, and you can get it in sizes to fit hardcover or paperback books. Both are $69.95. My take on this thing, after the jump.

I like the idea of concentrating light where you need it without bothering anyone else, but it looks like there would still be a lot of light reflected off the page that might annoy someone who needs to sleep in darkness. Plus, it looks like it would be a pain the ass to cope with this thingamajig every time you want to turn the page.

I also wish we could see a better picture of this thing, because it's hard to tell how big it is or what it looks like with its only accompanying photo. This might be one of those things that sounds like a good idea at first, but as soon as you start using it you immediately know that it isn't. – Charlie White

Product Page [Hammacher Schlemmer]

The BeamBag will probably be used more for comic book reading than Important Novels; its $25 price is well within reach of those unfortunate indentured servants who still must heed lights-out orders from the 'rents. Slip it in the back door, kiddies, they'll never know. – Charlie White

BeamBag light for night owls [ubergizmo]

Nice invention, and you can even wear it in public to look like a trendy Bluetooth headset wearer. – Travis Hudson

Product Page [Via Ubergizmo]

Thumbthing [Cool Hunting]

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