Dudes, the publishing industry is sucking harder than a middle-aged hedge fund manager summiting K2. What it needs is a jolt of hot, unadulterated innovation. Get ready, 'cause Amazon's entering the publishing biz with the world's foremost synergetically awesome innovabro.

Timothy Ferriss, author of The 4-Hour Workweek and The 4-Hour Body, is half-man, half-TED presentation. Idol of flabby tech geeks everywhere, Ferriss is the kind of guy who takes four weeks off to trek around the world and politely informs everyone who sends him an email during that time that "sadly, it will be deleted." He will also tell you how to give a woman a 15-minute-long orgasm.

Now Ferriss is teaming up with Amazon in its first foray into publishing the books it sells. Amazon will be the publisher of Ferriss' new book, The 4-Hour Chef. Ferriss told the The Times, "The opportunity to partner with a technology company that is embracing publishing is very different than partnering with a publisher embracing technology."

The publishing industry is obviously concerned that Amazon will use its superior technology to automatically install Ferriss' new book on every computer in the world via lasers. But Amazon told the Times "our success will only help the rest of publishing." Then Tim Ferriss climbed into a suit of robotic armor made of 30,000 Amazon Kindles and crushed a full-scale replica of an independent bookstore with a sledgehammer. [NYT, image via Anne Helmond's Flickr]