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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In an effort to promote its online ebook store, the website shortcovers is holding an iPod touch giveaway. The best part for those of you who aren’t feeling spendy is you can enter up to 5 times without making a purchase. Note: I mistakenly wrote that the entry limit was 25 when I first posted this. My apologies.

Of course, any ebook purchase between now and September 27th will also count as one of your 5 entries.

[Info page on shortcovers iPod touch giveaway]

I’ve been using the shortcovers iPhone app this week to read Kathy Griffin’s new biography, “Official Book Club Selection”–which interestingly was about 50 cents cheaper than the Amazon version earlier this week when I bought it (it’s now about 50 cent more expensive, go figure)–and I’d give it a B-. It’s not a bad app once you get into your book and start reading it, but there are some definite bugs and usability quirks that need to be addressed. But of course, if you win an iPod touch, you can also install Stanza, Kindle, or the B&N Reader app on it and read from whatever store or private collection you like.

Lastly, one bonus of shortcovers files are that you can read them online via the shortcovers website, or on your Windows or Mac PC using Adobe’s Digital Editions software. They also work on Sony’s ereader devices. Sorry, Kindle owners, you’re out of luck.

If you read a lot of online content, you need to know about Kindlefeeder, because it will drastically improve your reading experience on the Kindle. Kindlefeeder does two things extraordinarily well:

• It lets you pick up to 30 rss feeds from blogs, magazines, whatever you can find online that you like to read, and it converts those into a single document with full navigation and lets you wirelessly send it to your Kindle on a schedule you determine;
• It lets you copy and paste any text you find online into a simple form and, with one button press, send it wirelessly to your Kindle.

Thanks to Kindlefeeder, I get a little giddy when I pick up my Kindle each morning and see that day’s new blog feeds waiting for me. It would cost me well over $50 to “subscribe” to this many blogs through the Kindle store, if I could even find all of them on their store, which I can’t.

Option 2 is a real time saver for me. I subscribe to the print version of The New Yorker, but of course I’d much rather read each issue on my Kindle. Currently I have to look through the print issue for articles I’m interested in, go to their website and download the full text, paste it into a Word doc and clean up the formatting, save it and email it to my Kindle. With Kindlefeeder, I can skip the last three steps–I just copy the full text of the article, paste it into the Kindlefeeder form, and hit send.

The service is an extension of Kindlefeeds, which was created by Daniel Choi so that he could download RSS feeds into a format suitable for his Kindle. In fact, if you know what you’re doing with computers, he’s distributing the code here so that you can set up your own private Kindlefeeder if you like.

Visit Kindlefeeder.

Do you like sci-fi and fantasy fiction? If so, you probably already recognize the name Tor Books, and you certainly recognize many of the writers it has published over the years. Not only do they run a great blog–its got everything from interviews to cool science-friendly news to cartoons and comics–but they’re also one of the only publishers who regularly offer completely free digital copies of books for registered users.

This month, they’re offering Jane Lindskold’s The Buried Pyramid for free. (Comparison shopping: it’s currently $6.39 to download from the Kindle store.) All you have to do is sign in to tor.com and it’s yours.

Since I went on a tear yesterday about dumb publishers who aren’t taking advantage of new business models, I thought it would be nice to point out one that’s doing something cool and inventive. I think Tor’s registration model is an ideal customer/publisher relationship–Tor gets a captive audience of enthusiastic fans who want to hear from them about upcoming releases, and readers get the occasional freebie in a format that displays without problems on a Kindle, a Sony Reader, your smartphone, your laptop, etc.

Thanks, Tor!

New users can register for their email newsletters (and free book downloads) here.

Because it’s that time of year, so why the heck not? (Remember, here’s how to add them to your own Kindle.)