I love to read. Before the advent of personal electronics, I always had a book with me, and would spend my lunch hours and breaks at work reading. One of the main reasons that I bought a Palm Pilot was so that I could carry a few books with me and read them through the Palm Reader (now eReader) app. My Palm Pilot didn’t have much storage space, and I ended up buying a storage module, and still having to delete books once I’d read them.
Fast forward to today, and the iPhone. There are several iPhone apps that allow you to read ebooks on the iPhone. The free eReader app is pretty good. Books can be purchased through eReader.com or Fictionwise, and they can be sent to your iPhone automatically. Fictionwise also allows you 25 MB of space on their servers to upload “personal content,” so if you have ebooks that you acquired previously, you can upload them and send them to your iPhone to be read through eReader.
Fictionwise also has frequent rebate specials where, if you purchase a new release or best-seller, they will rebate the purchase price back into your account to use for future purchases.
eReader splash screen and library list:
The eReader app has quite a few customization settings–font, font size, line spacing, margins, justification–and you can create personalized “themes” and set your own background and font colors. You can also change the page turn gesture to “tap” or “swipe” either up/down or left/right.
eReader book page, with and without menu settings bar:
Before Amazon came out with the free Kindle for iPhone app, I used eReader and was happy with it, but now that I’m more used to Kindle, a couple of things about eReader annoy me.
On the Kindle app, you “tap” on the left or right-hand side of the “page” to turn pages, and if you want the menu and settings bar, you tap in the center of the screen. In eReader, you choose either “tap” or “swipe” to turn pages, and the other one is the gesture for the menu, so, for example, if you’ve chosen “tap” as the page turn gesture, you have to “swipe” to get the menu. I invariably try to tap in the center of the screen, and end up turning the page rather than getting the menu. A small thing, but annoying.
Kindle splash screen and library list:
Having said that, the Kindle for iPhone app doesn’t have many customization options. You can change the font size, and you can choose from three pre-determined themes–black on white, white on black, and brown on cream (“sepia”), which is the one I use.
Kindle book page, with and without menu setting bar:
Both eReader and Kindle allow you to lock the orientation, which is something that the iPhone in general doesn’t allow you to do, so that it doesn’t automatically flip to landscape orientation if you move the phone too far from center.
If you have an actual Kindle appliance, or use the Kindle app on your Mac or PC, the Kindle for iPhone app will automatically sync to the last page you read, so you can pick up your book right where you left off the place you were reading. The Kindle appliance isn’t backlit, so you can’t read it in the dark without a light. In contrast, the iPhone is backlit, so it’s no problem (barring eyestrain) to read in the dark. I often find myself sleepless in the middle of the night, and pick up my iPhone off the bedside table, switch it to night mode (white on black) and read a few chapters of my latest book.
Browsing the Amazon site for Kindle books is a pleasant experience, and if you find a book that you think you might be interested in, you can request a free sample, which is sent automatically to your iphone. The next time you open up the Kindle app, the book sample (usually the first chapter) will show up in your book list. If you like the sample and want to buy the book, just click “buy this book” at the end of the sample, and you can have it on your iPhone in a matter of seconds. You can quite often find free Kindle books on Amazon, as well. Just search Amazon for “free kindle books.”
There are other ebook readers in the iTunes store. Barnes & Noble has one, which is basically the same as eReader, with a few additional setting such as an “invert” button that quickly changes to the white-on-black color scheme.
B&N ereader splash screen and library list:
B&N ereader book page (inverted), with and without menu bar:
Stanza is another popular ebook reader.
Stanza splash page and library list:
Stanza is ineresting in that they have connections with loads of ebookshops, just click the “Get Books” button and you are presented with a long list of online bookstores divided into sites where you can purchase books (Fictionwise, O’Reilly, SmashWords), and sites where you can get free ebooks. Most of the free ones are public domain.
Stanza book page, with and without menu bar:
I love ebooks. It’s the convenience that I love, and not having to carry around anything other than my phone, which I have with me all the time anyway. If I’m stuck in line at the post office, or waiting at the car wash, I can read a couple of chapters of my current book, or buy a new one immediately if I need something new to read. It’s also saving me space at home, I seldom buy a physical book anymore. My local library has also started to offer ebooks for limited loan, but they don’t have anything that works on Macs yet. I’m sure that will happen one day.
