The Sony Google E-Reader: Death of the author? ... and the publisher?

A day after Fujitsu announced its “Kindle-Killer” color e-reader, and Discovery Communications announced it was suing Amazon because the Kindle was a patent infringement, Sony and Google issued a joint announcement that they were teaming up to challenge Amazon, too.

As a Wall St. Journal story by Geoffrey A. Fowler and Jessica E. Vascellaro put it, the partnership was a “strike against Amazon’s Kindle electronic book reader … that will give users of the Sony Reader device access to more than half-a-million public domain books from Google’s ambitious book digitization project. The books will be offered to Sony Reader users free via the online Sony eBook store.”

“We aren’t set on just having books purchased from our store,” says Sony’s Steve Haber

. “We believe the more content that is allowed access to the device, the better value it is to our customers.”

A good thing, no? Well, no, says the WSJ report: “Some publishers and authors remain concerned about a $125 million settlement that Google struck” with trade groups representing authors and publishers because “titles currently covered by the Sony deal are outside the scope of that settlement, which would allow Google to offer expanded access to millions of titles under copyright pending court approval this summer.” It also seems as if the next step would be for Google to become a publisher, putting them out of business.

Still, it’s still about getting more books — in whatever format — into the hands of more people, right? Whoever publishes them? Well, not really. As the WSJ report puts it, “Sony and Amazon are jockeying to lead a new generation of reading devices that could do for publishing what Apple Inc.’s iPod did for music, enabling the companies to make money as gadget makers and distributors of digital media.”

D’oh!