Cory Doctorow, the sci-fi author and ebook pioneer (at least when it comes to DRM and pricing), announced this month in his new Publishers Weekly column that he’s about to embark on a bold publishing experiment. He says he’s going to publish his next book on his own, or at least without a publisher’s help, as he’ll be calling in favors from professionals to help with artwork, editing, and printing. He’s going to use all the unconventional distribution formats he’s now familiar with, and he’s going to make a profit.

Best of all for the rest of us, he says he will document the process and share the results, which means any writer or publisher curious about digital distribution will be able to benefit from whatever happens. I’m rooting for ya, Doctorow.

I also think it might be interesting to look at this experiment in the context of three other online distribution experiments.

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The National Federation of the Blind has joined up with dozens of other organizations to form the Reading Rights Coalition, which is fighting for the right to use the Kindle 2’s text-to-speech function on any text without having to pay extra. You probably remember that when the Kindle 2 came out in February, the Authors Guild complained that text-to-speech was in violation of the audiobook rights of books, and Amazon backed down from a potential lawsuit by saying they would let authors disable the function on a case-by-case basis.

The Reading Rights Coalition says that’s discriminatory, because it interferes with technology that for the first time gives anyone who has problems reading print equal access to the same library of books as the sighted.

They’re holding a protest in NYC on Tuesday, April 7th (tomorrow) at the offices of the Authors Guild, but if you can’t make it you might want to visit their website and sign their petition showing your support for the right to use text-to-speech for print-disabled consumers.

In the apparent war between publishers/authors and readers (and no, there shouldn’t be a war between us, but that’s what seems to happen in times of innovation), Amazon has again forsaken us. By “us,” I mean readers, and by “forsaken” I mean that Amazon gave in to the Authors Guild regarding the ‘read it now” function of the Kindle 2. From now on, authors and publishers can disable the feature on any titles they choose.

I bet Amazon could have won any lawsuit, just like Google could have won the copyright lawsuit that the Authors Guild brought against them a few years ago over their library scanning project, but Amazon doesn’t seem to want a fight. I get that. On the other hand, it’s infuriating to watch this group of 8,000 or so members strip out functionality that they don’t legally have any right to touch.

I hope someone quickly develops a way to block those crippled ebooks from searches on Amazon’s store. If they want to sell reduced-funtionality versions of their books, there should be an easy way to filter them out so readers don’t have to bother with them ever again.

“Amazon lets publishers and writers disable Kindle 2’s read-aloud feature” [Los Angeles Times]