An unforeseen application of Sony’s E-Reader is as an editorial tool. To save printing costs and spare editors spine-strain as they shlepped five or ten pounds of manuscipts in their backpacks, book publishers recently began issuing Sonys to editors. They now simply upload book submissions and read them that way. The problem is, they haven’t been able to highlight text, write notes, and otherwise do the thing that editors do best.

The next version of the Reader, to be released for the holidays, addresses those issues and more, though we’re still far from full editorial markup capabilities.

For civilians who just like to annotate books, the new version of the Reader offers a touch screen, popup virtual keyboard, and (attention sleeping spouses!) built-in LED reading light. You can also turn pages by brushing the screen with your finger. Expanded memory provides capacity of about 350 books, far more with an optional memory stick.

Want wireless access? Go buy a Kindle; the Sony has forsaken it, at least for this latest round of improvements. And has the price come down? No, it’s gone up. To $400, in the hope that consumers will like the tradeoff for the new features.

Mac lovers will have to go on holding their breath. Sony Gen-3 is still PC.

For a full description, click here.

– Richard Curtis