It would seem to be a magazine's dream in these straitened times: Take something you have already published and sold, repackage it and distribute it without all that expense of paper, ink and trucks, and then sell it again.
This week, Newsweek will publish four books, one about each of the major presidential and vice presidential candidates -- Senators John McCain, Barack Obama and Joseph Biden, and Gov. Sarah Palin -- books that will not appear in print but will be available only as e-books from Amazon.com for download to Amazon's Kindle device.
The books will contain versions of articles that Newsweek, owned by The Washington Post Company, has already published during the campaign. Turning this kind of collection into books is an old idea; what is new is to do it with such minimal production and distribution costs that even the most limited sales could be profitable.
Amazon says this is probably the first such venture by a publication, but it is not likely to be the last.
"We think it's a very interesting model that could broaden," said Ian Freed, an Amazon vice president in charge of the Kindle reading device. "This could start to change the way at least some books are published."