Beast Books will be longer than conventional long-form magazine articles but shorter than conventional nonfiction books. They will be published digitally and distributed on multiple platforms, and will soon thereafter be available as handy paperbacks. They’ll provide megabyte edification—and high-voltage provocation—with the ambition of enlarging our understanding of the complexities we chronicle every day at the fast and furious pace of breaking news on The Daily Beast. [via thedailybeast.com]

I was just having a conversation with some tech-savvy friends last night about how the Internet has taken over practically every form of content, except long-form writing—and how the e-reader revolution is coming for that now, too. For that reason, I think the idea behind Beast Books—stories too long for the browser being offered as digital-first e-books—is incredibly smart. E-books, at this point in time, are sort of a middle way. Less substantial than actual books, releasing one still has more gravitas than just posting something on the web in HTML. And you can charge for them. (Maybe.)

That said, Beast Books’ first outing, “Wingnuts,” demonstrates how confused (and confusing) this nascent market still is. Brown says the books “will be published digitally and distributed on multiple platforms, and will soon thereafter be available as handy paperbacks.”

Okay. Which platforms and for how much? The call-outs on the site say $15.95, but the link takes you to Amazon, where the book is available for the now famous price-point of $9.99 for Kindle and $10.85 for the paperback, which will be released on February 23. So the book starts digital and then ladders up to the premium in-store price of $15.95? Does the business plan call for anyone to actually acquire the book this way and for this price, or is this a phantom product meant only to justify the price of the digital download? Alternatively, perhaps Brown will go all the way, and ladder up to a hardcover release, $27.95, for the spring. (I seriously doubt this.)

In any case, I like a model that suggests that a print book is an enhanced e-book, rather than looking at e-books as degraded print books.