There’s good news and maybe even better news in the e-reader space this week. And both come from the announcement that Tina Brown’s Daily Beast is getting into the book business with a plan to launch original digital titles on her site, followed by paperback distribution through Perseus Books.

The good news is that this is exactly what digital publishing needs to fuel its growth: a product ideally suited to a new technology. Brown’s entry into the field validates the idea of writing specifically for the Kindle and its competitors, a huge vote of confidence in the tools. The less-great news is that for all of Brown’s talent for attention-getting, the Daily Beast may not have the right content to drive sales. Which just might be the point of the whole deal—with Brown using the book deal as a back door to better content.

Once Amazon (AMZN) combined e-ink screens with wireless connectivity, the publishing game was open to change. But so far no one has created a must-have product for a digital reader alone—especially not the newspapers with most to gain. For a big news organization, the base of digital readers is still too small to attract this effort. The devices are like shiny new toys that don’t come with batteries. You can admire them but you’re not getting the full fun effect.

That leaves the field wide open for Brown and her plan to create content that is too long for daily journalism—for either a newspaper or an easy read on a PC—and too short to be launched on its own as a book. With around 800,000 unique users a month and Brown’s flair for promotion, the Daily Beast would seem like a powerful catapult for these titles.

Once they gain momentum, Perseus, the underdog publishing house with a real need for products, will release the books to stores. (What the announcement in the Times doesn’t say is that if Perseus is smart, it will be able to let a title die if the digital edition doesn’t catch on.) Details of the arrangement are sparse, but Perseus is paying the Daily Beast an advance against its editorial work. This advance will be recouped across the three to five titles the company publishes next year. Authors will receive an advance of less than $50,000 from Perseus for book projects that should take no more than three months to write. (Not a bad gig if you’re a writer.) The Daily Beast publishes some part of the ebook and promotes the rest. The deal still leaves open the question of whether the ebooks will be sold from the site itself, which is probably a way to stay neutral in the fight between Amazon and Barnes & Noble (BKS). If the project takes off, writer, publisher, and Web site will split the profits in a manner Perseus CEO David Steinberger says will be in the author’s favor compared with traditional publishing.

It’s a win-win-win for everyone. Readers get new opportunities to learn about fascinating subjects without having to wait months or years for publishers to release the books, writers get more opportunities to write, and the Daily Beast opens a potential revenue spigot in an advertising-starved world. And it’s exactly what the publishing business needs. The publisher gets field-tested content with powerful publicity air-cover and a limit on production and distribution costs.