Amazon.com sent out word today that the sale of electronic books (books in digital form that can be read on devices like the Kindle or iPad) have outsold hardcover books for the past three months. Presumably softcover books are still holding onto their “most purchased” title, but it may only be a matter of time before they as well fall to the digitized onslaught. This is a sad day for Luddites everywhere. And a happy one for folks who hate paper cuts.

John Stossel‘s golf cart made another appearance last night on The O’Reilly Factor, but rather than being a simple goofy representation of the perils of over-sized government, it represented something much more sinister.

Sometime Friday, Amazon stopped directly selling all books put out by the publisher Macmillan, due to a disagreement over future pricing of e-books. Let’s be clear, it’s not just that Amazon wasn’t selling Macmillan books on the Kindle. Amazon was no longer directly selling any books from this publisher, though one can still buy them new and used on the website through third-party vendors. This is a dispute with massive consequences for publishers — and it’s not great for Amazon, either. So why did both companies find themselves in this mutually destructive game of chicken?

Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal reported that HarperCollins is in talks with Apple to bring e-books to its much-hyped Tablet, set to be revealed (fingers crossed) on January 27th. But even more interesting? The ebooks “would have added features.” This implies video. And color. And pictures. And social media. In books!

Time, Inc.’s proposed tablet PC magazines. With some good reason – the demonstration video below, showcasing Sports Illustrated (and narrated with gusto by SI editor Terry McConnell) is pretty snazzy. Think of a Kindle that is in color. And can play video. And runs on a real computer. And that you probably shouldn’t take in the bathtub.

Who: Wallace Shawn, Tony Kushner, and Walter Mosley, moderated by Gene Seymour. What: The Nation’s “What Will Become of Our Culture?” Where: Symphony Space When November 18, 2009 Thumbs: Up

Pretty much everyone – from Politics Daily to BusinessWeek to the LA Times to textbook companies and every techie publication known to man – is anticipating the release of a Kindle-esque Apple tablet, or at least an announcement of it. Perhaps Steve Jobs spoke too soon last year when he told the New York Times that the Kindle would inevitably fail because Americans just don’t read anymore.

A whole lot of people wake up on Saturday mornings with Scott Simon. Simon is the long-time host of NPR’s Weekend Edition Saturday, and the fact that he boasts 800,000-plus twitter followers is a small measure of the program’s reach. Today he answers our Five Quick Questions.