The Saturday morning serial model of the 1950s may be long dead in the film world, but a new eBook publisher is looking to bring it back in a more modern form.

Backlit is producing a string of Young Adult fiction in eBook form, recruiting Hollywood writers to pen the tales, which invariably end with a cliffhanger. It's a model that, if it works, not only guarantees a fairly predictable revenue stream, but has caught the eye of producers.

Jack Giarraputo of Happy Madison has secured a first look film and television deal with the company, which currently offers two series - Borrowing Abby Grace and The Start-Up – and has two more queued up.

Prices are kept low intentionally. Borrowing Abby Grace and The Start-Up cost $2.99 per 'episode' with a word count of 20,000-30,000 words. That's about 1/5 the size of a Twilight novel. (One upcoming series, entitled, The Dig, will charge $6.99 for a 60,000-80,000 word episode.) To ensure the material connects with its audience, Backlit has recruited Hollywood writers who have a track record of appeal to the demographic. (All authors write under pseudonyms to protect their day jobs.)

"There's kind of a renaissance in reading these days," says founder Panio Gianopoulos. "Teenagers today read more words per day than any generation before them. Of course, they're reading Facebook and Twiter and text messages, but they're not opposed to reading books."

The serial formula is no stranger to print, either, but hasn't seen a lot of success since Steven King revived it with The Green Mile.

The goal, of course, is to see these series expand to other mediums, but Gianopoulos declined to discuss whether Giarraputo has picked up any options yet. However, he said, "We think the eBook is the perfect way to create a television model for our series."

The long standing whisper in the consumer electronics space has been that Apple is working to find a way to innovate in the television industry as radically as it had impacted the music, telecommunications and tablet fields.

Now, with the launch of Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs, those whispers are becoming a roar.

Isaacson quotes Jobs as saying he struggled with the idea of an integrated television set that was as easy to use as other Apple products – but towards the end of his life, he found a solution he liked

From the book:

"'I'd like to create an integrated television set that is completely easy to use,' he told me. 'It would be seamlessly synced with all of your devices and with iCloud.' No longer would users have to fiddle with complex remotes for DVD players and cable channels. 'It will have the simplest user interface you could imagine. I finally cracked it.'"

The revelation – just one paragraph amidst over 600 pages – has got analysts in a tizzy. Piper Jaffray's Gene Munster, who has been pushing Apple to make TV more than a "hobby" for years, says he believes an Apple TV could debut by late 2012 or early 2013. Prototypes, he says, are already in the works.

User interface has been a growing concern for television manufacturers – and many feel the set is due for a makeover, given the ever-increasing amount of content that's being offered to consumers.

"Manufacturers often like to build closed systems -- and that makes it difficult to integrate them with each other," says Craig Engler, senior vice president and g.m. of Syfy Digital. "It could be that Apple does for the television industry what it did for tablets: create a new standard that everyone follows."

The speculation could be misplaced, though. Isaacson, in a conversation with CNET, further addressed the Apple-manufactured TV comment, saying "They weren't close at all. He told me it was very theoretical. These were theoretical things they were thinking about in the future."

Turns out that Hogwarts isn't an easy school to get into.

Pottermore, J.K. Rowling's interactive Website for fans of her Harry Potter series (as well as the only place to buy eBook versions of the tomes, began the search for its first million members over the weekend – and the competition is tight.

Fans have one chance per day (through Saturday) to gain access, by answering a trivia question from the books and attaching the answer to the end of a specific Web address. First, though, they'll have to find the "Magical Quill" to determine the question.

"The Magical Quill is located in Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry," the site explains. "It detects the birth of a magical child and writes his or her name down in a large book. Every year, Professor McGonagall checks the book and sends owls to the children who are turning eleven, to inform them that they have a place at Hogwarts. The lucky few who locate The Magical Quill during the Magical Quill challenge (which will run from 31 July to 6 August 2011) will have the chance to register for Pottermore early and gain access to the site before it opens."

Most visitors are going to be met with the greeting shown in the picture accompanying this story. Spots go fast – and you really have to know your Potter trivia to stand a chance.

1 million people worldwide will gain entrance to the site for the beta test. The rest of us Muggles will be welcomed in October.

Bite-sized snacks fill the grocery stores. Bite-sized gaming is taking that industry by story. So it was only a matter of time before bite-sized eBooks hit the market.

Amazon has unveiled a new initiative dubbed “Kindle Singles” – snacky novellas or essays from thought leaders. The mini-books will range from 10,000 to 30,000 words and will be priced considerably lower than full-length titles.

Amazon describes Singles as being “twice the length of a New Yorker feature or as much as a few chapters of a typical book”. The company says its looking for serious writers, thinkers, scientists, business leaders, historians, politicians and publishers to help fill its ranks.

The company has not yet announced a specific price range for the Singles. If you've got something you think should make the cut, fire it to digital-publications@amazon.com for consideration.

Anthony Zuiker will always be known as the creator of “CSI,” but he’s also the author of the “Level 26” thriller series. Now he’s bringing the two worlds together.  

On the Oct. 14 episode of “CSI,” the forensic investigators will square off against Sqweegel – the “forensic proof” serial killer from Zuiker’s books. Ann Margaret guest stars in the episode.

Single character crossovers from the book to TV world are rare – but Zuiker’s not planning to stop there. Two weeks after the episode airs (and, conveniently enough, the second “Level 26” book hits store shelves), Zuiker hopes to launch an iPad ‘digi-novel’ of the book, which will incorporate several multimedia elements, including a one-hour digital short telling a back story featuring the book’s characters. (Justine Bateman is among the cast.)

Zuker incorporated these cyber-bridges into his first “Level 26” book, but felt they were too disjointed and out of context. Readers were also directed to the book’s Website to view them, which wasn’t ideal. (Readers of “Dark Prophecy,” the second book will also have a chance to watch them online.) By making the book an app – and not just a download from the iBooks store, he was able to incorporate all the interactive elements into a single experience.

“The ideal consumption experience is really on something like the iPad,” he says. “Words pulse as you read them and you can flick your finger and a gunshot hole appears on the screen. It allows you to collect evidence that leads to a separate story line.”

The gaming world is exploding today with news that Zenimax Media, the parent company of id Software and Bethesda Softworks, has filed a trademark for “Oblivion”. Specifically, that trademark is meant for use in “motion picture film production; entertainment services, namely, providing motion picture theatrical films in the field of fantasy games.”  

Inevitably, that has led to speculation that a film adaptation of the most recent “Elder Scrolls” game may be in the works. Don’t hold your breath.

Guarding a copyright, particularly on a title that was so successful at retail, is a standard move by corporations. And a recent announcement from Radical Publishing made the action an even wiser one.

Radical last year signed a deal with “Tron Legacy” director Joseph Kosinski to develop a graphic novel entitled – you guessed it – “Oblivion”. Last month, reports began circulating that Disney had bought the film rights to the book.

Kosinski’s "Oblivion" is set in a future in which the civilized world lives above the clouds, while alien scavengers call the irradiated planet home. It focuses on a worker who finds a woman trapped inside a crashed spacepod on the planet below.

Bethesda’s, of course, is the fourth game in the “Elder Scolls” series and revolves around your effort to prevent a cult that plans to open the games to a hellish world called Oblivion.

Of course, this doesn’t conclusively prove Bethesda has no Hollywood ambitions – but I wouldn’t line up for tickets just yet. 

Starz is doing a multimedia juggling act as it ramps up the marketing machine for “The Pillars of the Earth,” its eight-hour miniseries based on Ken Follett’s novel. The cable channel and publisher Penguin Group have teamed up to launch an “amplified” version of the tome for Apple’s iPad.  

The new version offers the complete book along with an audio adaptation and the opportunity to watch key scenes and view images from the series. The eBook will be updated with additional visual content as the series airs.

Also included is a character tree to help readers keep the story’s sizable cast straight – but avoids any spoilers for the story. As new characters are introduced in the story, they’re added to the tree.

Follett himself contributes a multimedia diary giving his on-set impressions  - and gives a preview of his next book, which is due this fall.  

The eBook sells for $12.99 – and an optimized version for the iPhone and iPod touch will be available in the coming days.

Disney’s reintroduction of Mickey Mouse to the video game world is expanding into other mediums.  

Beyond the work he is doing on “Epic Mickey,” developer Warren Spector is working on a comic book adaptation of the Wasteland world where the game is set. Comic and sci-fi superstar author Peter David is assisting on the book (and likely doing most of the writing).

The pair will discuss bringing the world to life in dual mediums and give a first-look at the comic pages in a conference on Saturday, July 24, from 4:30-5:30 at Comic Con 2010.

The Wasteland, if you’re unfamiliar with “Epic Mickey,” is an in-game world that's home to all of Disney's rejected creativity. It is filled with several long-forgotten Disney creations, chief among which will be Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, the cartoon character Walt Disney created before Mickey but lost the rights to in 1928, when the financier and distributor of his films fired him. Disney CEO Bob Iger personally took on the task of reacquiring the rights to Oswald from Universal in 2006.

It’s hardly a surprise, but we can now officially add Barnes & Noble to the list of companies with their own eReader. The bookseller is taking on Amazon again with the Nook.

Shipping at the end of November, the Nook will sell for $259 – roughly in line with the Kindle. It features the dual touchscreens the rumor mill predicted, along with 2 GB of internal storage (which will hold up to 1,500 books, magazines and newspapers), a microSD slot and a MP3 player.

Like every other eReader on the market, the main screen will feature E Ink technology. The color screen below is used to browse covers when shopping and navigate to different features.

It’s the features that make Nook stand out. Owners will be able to lend eBooks to friends for up to 14 days. Better still, those friends won’t have to own a Nook to borrow the book. The device will send it to cell phones and computers as well.

Downloads on the go are done via AT&T’s 3G network or Wi-Fi, but customers who take their Nook to their local B&N get an added bonus. In-store, Nook owners will be able to read any eBook in the company’s collection for free.

Granted, that’s not much of a stretch. You can do the same thing with print books in any store – but it’s something the Kindle can’t offer.

The Nook does have disadvantages, though. Primarily, Barnes & Noble’s eStore doesn’t have the depth that Amazon’s does.

Barnes & Noble was briefly taking pre-orders for the device earlier today when it prematurely launched the Nook’s website. That’s down again now, but should be back up after a 4pm ET “official” unveiling of the device in New York. 

Back in July, Amazon was starting to look like the gang who couldn’t shoot straight.

Kindle customers who had bought a copy of “1984” found the book deleted from their machine with no explanation. While it was later learned the publisher who uploaded the book did not have the appropriate rights, it set a scary precedent – that the company could ‘unsell’ something that you had legally bought.

Now Amazon is realizing what a colossal screw-up it made, calling it “stupid” and “thoughtless”. Better late than never, I suppose.

People affected by the action will receive a copy of “1984” for the Kindle (along with any annotations they made) or a $30 check or credit for Amazon products.

Gizmodo has the complete text of the note the company sent affected customers:

Hello,
On July 23, 2009, Jeff Bezos, our Founder and CEO, made the following apology to our customers:
“This is an apology for the way we previously handled illegally sold copies of 1984 and other novels on Kindle. Our “solution” to the problem was stupid, thoughtless, and painfully out of line with our principles. It is wholly self-inflicted, and we deserve the criticism we’ve received. We will use the scar tissue from this painful mistake to help make better decisions going forward, ones that match our mission.