Comparing e-book readers for the iPhone

What do you mean, do I use my new iPhone to make PHONECALLS? Are you crazy? I use it to read e-books. Thus far I’ve read half a dozen books on my iPhone and have become an avid fan of Fictionwise.com and other e-book sources.

I’m the type who ALWAYS has to have reading material with me for grocery store line-ups, waiting rooms in doctor’s offices, etc. I’ll read the back of a cereal box if there’s nothing else around.

Anyway, it’s been fantastic to be able to carry around a virtual library with me wherever I go. Right now, I have about 20 books loaded up in my iPhone, several magazines, and a dictionary.

For those of you with iPhones or interested in getting an iPhone, here’s my informal overview of the e-readers currently available:

eReader (version 1.1)

iTunes app store cost: Free.
URL: http://www.ereader.com/

The iPhone e-book reader I use the most these days is eReader. Main reasons: (1) It’s frequently updated with new features, and (2) It’s the recommended e-reader software in Fictionwise.com, my current favourite e-book source.

I like the fact that books load quickly, that I can choose to have the text displayed unjustified instead of justified, and I have lots of choice re: text sizes.

I also like the fact that the new version allows you to turn off automatic page orientation (text displayed portrait or landscape, depending on the orientation of the iPhone). As cool as automatic page orientation may be, I found it a pain when reading while lying down. You can choose what kind of gesture will make the pages turn. You can navigate to a specific page.

Here’s a YouTube video outlining some of the new features of the new version:

When you buy books at Fictionwise.com (I haven’t bought any from Ereader.com, but I suspect it’s similar), the download process is pretty straightforward. Purchased books are automatically added to your Fictionwise bookshelf and you can download them anytime.

Here are just a few of the titles in my eReader bookshelf right now:

Bookshelf (v1.1.903)

iTunes app store cost: $9.99.
URL: http://www.iphonebookshelf.com/

I’ve also been trying out Zachary Bedell’s Bookshelf app for the iPhone. It’s able to read a wider range of e-book formats including text, HTML, DRM-free MobiPocket, rich text, and MS Word DOC.

You can download books from your own computer — this can be handy or initially confusing, depending on how tech-savvy you are. You can see how-to videos about the download and set-up process here.

However, once you do it once or twice it’s a pretty straightforward process. You can buy and download books from Bedell’s server as well as servers set up by Webscriptions.net and the Baen Free Library of science fiction.

I also successfully imported one of my MS-Word doc files, though some of the formatting was lost. Still, this could be handy for proofreading a mss, though you’d have to make notes elsewhere since you can’t edit the doc.

There’s a wide choice of fonts and font sizes to choose from. I couldn’t find an easy way of skimming ahead or back in a book — you can use forward and back arrow keys to skip to the next or previous chapter, but no way of zooming ahead. If you were at the end of the book and wanted to review something in the third chapter, for instance, you’d have to repeatedly hit the “previous chapter” key until you got to the right chapter and then page forward to right place.

Unlike eReader, Bookshelf allows a user to make multiple bookmarks. So far I haven’t needed this feature since I usually just need one bookmark, and all the e-book readers automatically save your place when you leave the book.

Another feature I liked in Bookshelf was the auto-scrolling — you can set the scrolling speed as you read, and this saves you the hassle of having to turn pages. Bookshelf has many of the options offered by eReader, including being able to lock the page orientation.

Because Bookshelf is unable to read most of the books I’ve purchased from Fictionwise.com, however, I’ve been using eReader.com more often. The Bookshelf site has a FAQ as well as list of known bugs and pending enhancements; I look forward to seeing future versions!

Stanza (v1.3)

iTunes app store cost: Free for beta version (but will cost $15 when the release version comes out)
URL: http://www.lexcycle.com/support

I liked Stanza’s font size controller the best — you have more control and be able to see the size of the changed text without having to leave the Settings page. You can also use the “pinch” and “unpinch” gestures to control font size, though there’s a slight delay while the page adjusts. You also have control over line spacing, text color, background colour, text alignment and font face.

More options are available by going to the iPhone settings, under Stanza, including whether you want page rotation locked or not (else it will enable horizontal reading when you tilt your iPhone that way), what gesture you want to indicate a page turn, and other options.

I didn’t even realize these additional options were available until I read someone else’s review — although it’s nice to have these extra controls, it’s a pain to have to exit the book, go to the iPhone settings, make the change, then go back to Stanza to see the change.

I like the fact that you can access any chapter directly through the index.

The native format for Stanza is ePub, and you need to convert ebooks (which can be in formats like MS LIT, Mobipocket, Kindle, RTF, PDF, MS Word and others) into ePub. Here are some tips from Stanza’s FAQ on how to convert content.

Here are tips on how to get books onto your iPhone. I used the desktop Stanza to convert one of the manuscripts I’m working on and managed to import it into my iPhone Stanza with no problem, though formatting like italics is lost. I’m also not crazy about the idea of sharing only one book at a time rather than an entire directory.

One other quibble with Stanza: there is a bit of a lag when loading a new chapter or first loading a book.

Summary

Although I’m mainly using eReader at the moment, I’m going to keep my eye on updates on the other two. Because Bookshelf costs $10 instead of being free like the others, however, I suspect it may fall behind in terms of user base growth.

The iTunes app section also has a choice of e-books which don’t need a separate e-reader app; each title has a built-in reader. I bought a few of these and they’re ok except there’s no automatic or optional page orientation (portrait mode is the only choice) and they take up a slot in the iPhone app list.

The latter may not seem like a big deal, but because the iPhone has a limited number of app screens (9, I think), anyone who tends to accumulate a lot of apps and/or books on their iPhone will find this an issue.

Anyway, comments and corrections welcome!

Also see:

ebooks on the iPhone by Cartwright Reed
Is the iPhone the Ultimate eBook Reader?
A comprehensive review of iPhone e-book options by Chris Meadows
Will the iPhone kill the Kindle? by Josh Catone
Reading on the iPhone vs Reading on the Kindle (blogkindle.com)

Tagged as: iphone ebooks