It could change–and probably will when the first flurry is over–but, as I type, the Kindle edition of Dan Brown’s latest thriller The Lost Symbol is outselling the hardback on Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN). Meanwhile, Ted Kennedy’s True Compass, the other hot book release this week, can’t be bought via Kindle or Sony (NYSE: SNE) or as an e-book at all.

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You might argue that Sony (SNE) was visionary. In the fall of 2006, it introduced the first eBook with an E Ink screen–long before Amazon’s (AMZN) Kindle rolled out with the same technology. The Sony Reader also connected users to an online store, solving a problem that had long bedeviled the e-book market–how do you get books onto your new device?

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Many publishers were eager to see if Random House would challenge Amazon’s (AMZN) strategy of pricing the book industry’s most successful titles at $9.99 for the Kindle e-reader by withholding the e-book edition of Dan Brown’s upcoming novel, “The Lost Symbol.”

They got their answer Thursday, when Random House announced “now that all of our security and logistical issues surrounding the e-book of ‘The Lost Symbol’ have been resolved, the e-book will be released simultaneously with the hardcover on Sept. 15.” Random House’s Doubleday imprint is printing 5 million hardcover copies for the U.S.

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So you’ve got a Kindle, and you have books on it, and you want to keep those books–no matter what Amazon (AMZN) or a publisher decides you deserve in the future. Your legal options are limited, but you do have some.

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In the future, Amazon.com’s (AMZN) Kindle e-book reader will display more book formats beyond its own. And you should also expect to see Kindle books on a lot more devices.

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Prime View International, a Taiwanese company that makes an e-readers display part, said today it would purchase E-Ink, a company that provides the digital ink technology in the Amazon Kindle and Sony Reader, for $215 million. The two companies have been partners in developing the Sony and Amazon e-reader products, and the deal highlights PVI’s attempt to own the top provider of an essential technology for the growing e-reader market.

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Amazon.com’s (AMZN) Kindle e-book reader has already inspired hope for new digital business models for book and newspaper publishers. Now the Kindle wants to do business with bloggers too.

On Wednesday, Amazon unveiled a beta program that pays bloggers for Kindle subscriptions to their posts.

The Kindle comes with an experimental Web browser that allows users to surf ordinary Web sites. But for the sake of convenience, Amazon also sells Kindle subscriptions to a select list of blogs that are automatically updated and made available on the device’s home screen. Those subscriptions can cost as much as $2 per month.

Under the new program, Amazon will pay registered bloggers 30 percent of its subscription fee–pretty low, considering that Apple (AAPL) gives iPhone developers a 70 percent cut on sales of software applications for the device. So that’s about 60 cents per reader, per month, for the most expensive blogs.

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Just when I was coming to terms with my ambivalence toward my Kindle e-book reader, Amazon and the publishers have gotten greedy.

I’ve had a love-hate relationship with the device since I bought my first one about 9 months ago. As a frequent traveler and voracious reader, I’ve found the Kindle to be nearly ideal. I never have fewer than a dozen books in its memory, and they’re always things I want to read.

As someone who believes we should often interact with media instead of passively consuming it, however, I don’t think much of the Kindle for any purpose other than reading a narrative. And given what a disaster “digital rights management” (DRM) is becoming for scholarship, culture and ultimately freedom, the device’s restrictions on how I can use what I’ve purchased are deeply troubling.

Still, I’ve been using it with some degree of satisfaction (as have enough other people to have helped boost Amazon’s stock price, so as the holder of several hundred shares I’m slightly better off in that way, too). The second-generation model improved nicely on the first–among other things, fixing some user-interface quirks, letting me charge it via a USB cable, and boosting the battery life.

The books I load onto the device fall generally under the casual entertainment category. I buy a Kindle book the way I buy a movie ticket (or did before going to theaters became such a crappy experience).

These are books, like most movies, that I’ll read or watch once and forget about. A physical book is more like a DVD–something I want to own and enjoy again and again.

So the kinds of books I tend to buy for the Kindle are the sort I’d often pick up at an airport newsstand, namely mysteries, thrillers and semi-trashy novels that I’d sometimes leave in hotels or airplane seat-back pockets once I’d finished them. (I also subscribe to several magazines, and consider it a favor not to see the advertising.)

Once I got accustomed to reading e-books, I started doing something that had been out of character in the analog era: buying new books that, in print, were available in hardcover only. Why? The price, typically $10 (okay, one penny less), was right. In fact, my new-book purchases soared.

But not for long. In recent weeks, Amazon (AMZN) or the publishers (or both) have done their best to deter me from buying the latest releases. Prices have gone up, way up.

Now, I often find books for which I’d have gladly paid $10 listed at $14 or $15. I save these to a list I keep on the Amazon website, called “Too expensive for Kindle,” and periodically check to see if the price has dropped. So far, not yet on any of these.

Hiking prices this way creates a bad deal for the customer. Amazon’s price for a new hardcover is typically just a couple of dollars higher. This means I could buy the hardcover, read it and donate it to my local library, and–after the tax deduction–come out ahead. I’d do even better taking the book to my local used-book store and getting cash.

But I almost never buy new hardcovers of books I don’t expect to reread or use as a reference, because a) I’m kind of cheap; and b) I can stand waiting for the paperback. So if prices stay high, I stay away.

Now, sellers have every right to charge more for popular books, especially when they’re new. This is basic supply and demand. But when the price only makes sense for people who consider the ultra-portability of an e-book paramount, that’s a turnoff for other potential buyers.

As a customer I also understand supply and demand. My demand is extremely elastic, and in this case it’s snapped.

Last week’s introduction of the Kindle DX was framed in many ways by different constituencies, but I was taken aback by the praise heaped on the device by several newspaper people, including the CEO of the New York Times Co. (NYT) (in which I also own a small amount of stock). Newspapers aren’t going to fix their considerable woes with Kindles, and anyone who thinks so lives in a fantasy world.

The DX, with its bigger screen, strikes me as potentially useful in several ways, possibly including the textbook function that Amazon hopes to jumpstart with the help of several universities (including the one that employs me). But if textbook publishers don’t radically cut prices on the outrageously expensive books they sell, they will find themselves creating a strong incentive for precisely what they don’t want: unauthorized copying.

I suspect the DX will prove most useful in more prosaic ways. For example, it could be a nearly ideal container and viewer for technical documentation–thick manuals that need periodic updating, where the cost of printing is prohibitive and the bulk of the books is daunting for the user.

Will all of this be made moot by the widely anticipated Apple (AAPL) “NetPad” or whatever it’s going to be called? I refer to a device that looks like a larger version of the iPod Touch, which would be a wonderful mobile multimedia player, among other likely capabilities.

I doubt it. If you enjoy severe eye strain, reading books on a back-lit, glossy display is just the ticket. The passive displays on Kindles, the Sony (SNE) e-reader and other such devices are much better for this kind of reading.

One size does not fit all in the emerging world of devices. Then again, one carry-on bag doesn’t hold all devices. For now, however, the Kindle has a place in mine.

Amazon’s (AMZN) Kindle 2 is slimmer, faster and has longer battery life than its predecessor. But the newly launched e-book reader falls short when it comes to how well it displays text, say some users.

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As a few more libraries begin lending the Kindle, the e-book reading device from Amazon (AMZN), the company continues to offer ambiguous messages regarding its policies. Asked by the Howe Library, Hanover, NH, if it was OK to lend a Kindle, an Amazon support staffer said yes–and the library has proceeded to do so, with much positive response.

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Amazon still hasn’t said how many of its Kindle e-book readers have sold. But here’s one true sign of the gadget’s growing popularity: People are protesting it on several fronts.

On Tuesday, a group representing members of the National Federation of the Blind and the American Association of People with Disabilities staged a protest over limitations in the Kindle’s read-aloud feature. Last month, Amazon (AMZN) said it would amend the feature to give publishers and authors the ability restrict it at the request of the Authors Guild, which says voice performances of books require separate contracts. During the protest outside the New York headquarters of Authors Guild, protesters chanted, “Stop the greed, we want to read.”

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Is the digital savior of the sagging magazine industry finally in sight?

On Wednesday, Fujitsu Frontech began selling the world’s first color e-paper e-book reader. Available on April 20 in Japan only, the gadget costs 99,970 yen, or more than $1,000.

Until now, e-books like the Amazon (AMZN) Kindle and Sony (SNE) Reader have been limited to black and white or shades of gray, making them OK for reading plain books and newspapers that like to use stipple drawings, but not great for colorful print media such as magazines.

But if color e-book readers catch on, one theory holds, magazines and other media that currently print on dead trees would have a cheap way to distribute–and charge for–the colorful content and ads that marketers will pay for. Recently, publisher Hearst said it wanted to dive further into the e-book business.

Fujitsu’s color e-paper technology, first unveiled in 2007, is different from the technology created by the Massachusetts-based E Ink that’s used by the Sony and Amazon. But E Ink says it is working on color displays, too.

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Amazon has caved into demands from the Authors Guild that it disable the ability of the Kindle to read a book aloud. This is very bad news.

We had this battle before. In 2001, Adobe released e-book technology that gave rights holders (including publishers of public domain books) the ability to control whether the Adobe e-book reader read the book aloud. The story got famous when it was shown that one of its public domain works–“Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”–was marked to forbid the book to be read aloud….

Now the issue is back. The Authors Guild has objected because Amazon’s Kindle 2 has a function built in that enables the book to be read aloud. So when, for example, you’re commuting, you can plug your Kindle 2 into your MP3 jack and have the book read aloud.

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It’s hard not to love Amazon’s (AMZN) new e-book reader. For starters, it’s gorgeous. Unlike its bulky predecessor, the redesigned $359 Kindle, which came out this week, is light, thin, and disappears in your hands. If you think there’s no way you could ever get used to curling up with an electronic reader, you haven’t given the Kindle a chance. Load up a good book and you’ll soon forget you’re reading plastic rather than paper. You’ll also wonder how you ever did without it. The Kindle makes buying, storing, and organizing your favorite books and magazines effortless. You can take your entire library with you wherever you go and switch from reading the latest New Yorker to the latest bestseller without rolling out of bed. In my few days using it, I was won over: The Kindle is the future of publishing.

And that’s what scares me. Amazon’s reader is a brilliant device that shanghais book buyers and the book industry into accepting a radically diminished marketplace for published works. If the Kindle succeeds on its current terms, and all signs suggest it’ll be a blockbuster (thanks Oprah!), Amazon will make a bundle. But everyone else with a stake in a vibrant book industry–authors, publishers, libraries, chain bookstores, indie bookstores, and, not least, readers–stands to lose out.

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There was a certain irony Monday when Citigroup analyst Mark Mahaney jacked up his sales forecast for the Kindle, the electronic book reader developed by Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN)

Ironic because in Silicon Valley–the capital of early-technology adopters and the bleeding-edge users of all things geek–actual sightings of the device are quite rare.

Most of the digerati around here are still obsessed with Apple Inc.’s (AAPL) latest 3G iPhone, which still draws lines wrapping around the block. By contrast, the Kindle is so scarcely spotted that whenever tech analyst Rob Enderele uses his, little crowds tend to gather around him.

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