E-books on your iPhone
Friday, July 11th, 2008Okay, one more reason I need to have an iPhone….you can now download a free app that will allow you to read e-books!
From today’s Publisher’s Lunch:
With the release of Apple’s ambitious App Store today, the company puts themselves in the ebook business without having to go through the messiness of dealing with publishers. Among the free app downloads is Fictionwise’s eReader software (bundled with free copies of the public domain books, Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan of the Apes and James Fenimore Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans).
As indicated in the comments section of the TeleRead blog, the software was coded by Peanut Press co-founder Lee Fyock and another ex-peanut developer, Chris Eplett. Fictionwise’s Steve Pendergrast notes in the same thread that “in the coming weeks we will have a cleanup release that will make selected interface refinements as well as make it possible to upload personal content and content bought at other retailers or downloaded from free places like manybooks that support ereader format, followed by a couple more releases that will start filling in some of the advanced features that didn’t make it into the first release.” He also notes, “I just want to say up front that version 1.0 of the iPhone eReader isn’t perfect — we coded what we could so that we could have it available for use on day 1.”
Already, PC Magazine hails the app online as one of the best of the crop: “One of our top iPhone pet peeves has been that you couldn’t use it as an eBook reader, something that seems ideal given its sprawling screen. It made us long for the days of the PalmPilot, where we’d read free novels from Project Gutenberg during our subway commutes. Well this is one more barrier to buying an iPhone that’s fallen.”
Another posting cites a paid Bookshelf app ($.99) that says it supports ebooks in formats including mobipocket and html. Meanwhile, Richard Curtis reports via eReads.com that “in the future, Adobe and Mobipocket will be hitting the iPhone in a powerful way.”
At a quick glance this morning in the iTunes App Store, the eReader as the No. 33-ranking free app, and a paid version of Frommer’s San Francisco was the No. 33-ranking paid download. (There is no “books” sub-category in the App Store; books are filed within the subject-focused categories.)
Often-overlooked among those eager to experiment (or simply understand the scale of the potential market here): You don’t have to go buy an iPhone to play along. The apps work just fine on an iPod Touch with updated firmware, connected via wi-fi.
I’m too cheap to buy a membership to Publisher’s Marketplace, but I sure do appreciate the snippets of information that come with my daily Publisher’s Lunch e-mail. This one really caught my eye because the software was developed by Fictionwise people. Very exciting stuff.
Kris