Overall, Forrester predicts, U.S. consumers will purchase three million e-readers by the end of this year. That’s a bump from the analyst shop’s earlier prediction of two million. It thinks Amazon (AMZN) will claim 60 percent of the market, with Sony (SNE) taking 35 percent and the rest going to also-rans like iRex.

Have to say, I find that one a bit head-scratching: I gather that Sony’s device is supposed to have created a footprint overseas, but while I see the occasional Kindle on the subway or an airplane, I have never, ever, ever seen a Sony reader in the wild. Have you?

For what it’s worth, Forrester figures e-reader sales will double, to six million next year, pushed by media buzz along with the introduction of new devices, including the Apple (AAPL) wondertablet that everyone is convinced will show up–someday. They may even be right.

Amazon’s (AMZN) basic Kindle will now sell for $259, down from $299–and down from $359 earlier in the year. And the new version, which will allow users to download books in 100 countries besides the U.S., will sell for $279. It will be powered by a wireless connection provided by AT&T (T); the U.S.-only Kindle will continue to use Sprint (S) for a wireless connection.

Is there a catch? Maybe. Anti-Amazon gadfly Tom [Redacted!] (Tom, what do you do when you’re not emailing us this stuff?) points out a bit of fine print on Amazon’s order page: If you take your new Kindle outside the U.S. and try to actually buy something–or simply redownload something you’ve already bought–Amazon will charge you two bucks.

Here’s the fine print, which didn’t seem to make it into the press release–or (cough) the embargoed stories: “When traveling abroad, you can download books wirelessly from the Kindle Store or your Archived Items for a fee of $1.99.”

Still, it’s hard to see how Sony (SNE), whose comparable e-reader only offers a U.S. wireless connection (also from AT&T) and is scheduled to go on sale in December for $399, will be able to stay at that price point. And dark-horse Kindle competitors like iRex and Plastic Logic are going to have match or beat Amazon just to get into the race.

My pal Owen Thomas, late of Valleywag, has published a piece for NBC’s Bay Area local site that suggests that Time Inc. wants to get into the hardware business and produce its own e-reader.

That’s something other publishers, like Hearst and News Corp. (NWS), are actually doing or have at least mulled. But multiple sources familiar with the Time Warner (TWX) unit’s thinking say that’s not the case here.

But the publisher certainly is thinking about ways to create specialized content for e-reader devices and about the best way to distribute that content.

Time Warner executives have talked about this openly for many months–see Time Inc. digital guru John Squires’s comments in June–and Thomas appears to have gotten his hands on an internal document that addresses the same topic.

Most intriguing, according to Thomas’s read of the documents: A Hulu-like spinoff that would do…something:

The presentation concludes that Time Inc. and other partners should form a new, jointly owned company. Time Inc. might spin out its Maghound service, a service which lets consumers bundle multiple magazines together into a single monthly subscription, to form the base of the joint venture. The company is also considering acquiring other businesses to jumpstart the venture.

No comment from Time Inc.

But I do know that Time Inc.’s executives have met with other publishers about collaborating on e-reader standards, etc. And I do know that Time Inc. executives  think a special version of their print products, designed specifically for e-readers, is a good idea. Most everyone I talk to in magazine publishing, in fact, believes this.

And I understand why they do. In their minds, the e-reader versions of their products function just about the same way magazines do: People pay to read them and advertisers pay to distribute their messages through them. And–this part is crucially important, from their perspective–publishers retain control of distribution and the billing relationship with their customers.

That relationship gets obliterated in Amazon’s (AMZN) Kindle model: Publishers wholesale the stuff to Jeff Bezos, who deals with consumers directly. This is also one of the music industry’s big regrets about the digital age. Even though labels are selling their stuff on the Web, via Apple’s (AAPL) iTunes and others, they still don’t have direct relationships with its customers.

Which is why publishers are desperately hoping that they’ll be able to push their stuff through someone other than Jeff Bezos. On the surface, at least, it looks as though their wishes are being met: A bevy of Kindle competitors–Sony (SNE), Plastic Logic, iRex, etc.–is surfacing. Surely one or more of those will figure out how to offer publishers the terms they want.

But even if one or more of the Kindle clones succeeds, print publishers still have a core problem: They need to convince consumers that content–in any form, on any device–is worth paying for. That will work in some cases, but for many it’s going be a very hard slog.

The Open Book Alliance formally launched the manifesto this past week with which it’s challenging Google’s settlement with authors and publishers. The organization now has a Web site and quite an array of allies–which include, of course, Microsoft (MSFT), Yahoo (YHOO) and Amazon (AMZN). And as if Google doesn’t have enough on its plate, turns out that all along, Microsoft has been holding regular “Screw Google” meetings, the bastards. Uh, I thought that’s what people pay good money to learn in Business School. On a happier note, Howard Stern fans everywhere were happy to learn that Sirius XM (SIRI) has debuted a device that can turn an iPhone or iPod touch into a full-fledged satellite radio.

Over in Personal Technology, Walt reviewed Snow Leopard and found it to be an improvement on its predecessor, but with a lot of the upgrades under the hood invisible to most users. Not the typical object of desire we’re trained to expect out of Apple. In Mossberg’s Mailbox, Walt answers reader email about choosing a vendor to buy a computer online and setting parental controls in Firefox. In The Mossberg Solution, Katie Boehret explores the trials and tribulations of BlackBerry and iPhone users switching one for the other.

More next week.

The Open Book Alliance formally launched the manifesto this past week with which it’s challenging Google’s settlement with authors and publishers. The organization now has a Web site and quite an array of allies–which include, of course, Microsoft (MSFT), Yahoo (YHOO) and Amazon (AMZN). And as if Google doesn’t have enough on its plate, turns out that all along, Microsoft has been holding regular “Screw Google” meetings, the bastards. Uh, I thought that’s what people pay good money to learn in Business School. On a happier note, Howard Stern fans everywhere were happy to learn that Sirius XM (SIRI) has debuted a device that can turn an iPhone or iPod touch into a full-fledged satellite radio.

Over in Personal Technology, Walt reviewed Snow Leopard and found it to be an improvement on its predecessor, but with a lot of the upgrades under the hood invisible to most users. Not the typical object of desire we’re trained to expect out of Apple. In Mossberg’s Mailbox, Walt answers reader email about choosing a vendor to buy a computer online and setting parental controls in Firefox. In The Mossberg Solution, Katie Boehret explores the trials and tribulations of BlackBerry and iPhone users switching one for the other.

More next week.

“The ornamental design for an electronic media reader, as shown and described.”

About as exciting as the original Kindle design it describes, but this isn’t a utility patent, so you can’t really expect much from it. That said, the reference citations it contains are interesting. Among the devices included: the iRex iLiad, the NUUTbook an early prototype of the One Laptop Per Child Foundation’s XO laptop and Apple’s MacBook Pro.

Note: Be sure to see the liveblog of the Amazon announcement in New York by MediaMemo’s Peter Kafka, starting at 10:30 a.m. EDT.