In the story of the e-book, the main characters have been portable reading devices like the Kindle and its rival, the Reader from Sony.
But the latest wave of smart phones, with their big screens, intuitive interfaces and application storefronts, are providing book fans a convenient way to catch up on their reading without a dedicated device.
Shortcovers launched with about 50,000 books, many of them recent best-sellers and popular titles from major publishing houses. It’s not the 240,000 books available on the recently released Kindle 2, but it represents a lot of current titles, which have not been as available on smart phones.
“I think the Kindle is very much for the avid reader, but we’re for people who want the convenience factor and want to find a great read from the device they already have,” said Michael Serbinis, executive vice president of Shortcovers and chief information officer for Indigo Books & Music.
Shortcovers joins a handful of other smart phone e-book options such as Fictionwise’s eReader and ScrollMotion’s Iceberg reader, which allows publishers to sell their books as individual applications in the iPhone App Store.
But the most popular e-book app on the iPhone has been Stanza, by Lexcycle, which has registered more than 1.4 million application downloads since launching last year. Users have downloaded more than 5 million books, most of them free and older titles without copyright protections. Lexcycle, however, started selling paid books through Fictionwise and other distributors recently and now boasts about 90 percent of the best-sellers from last year…..
( More on SFGate.com )
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