Fictionwise e-reader for iPhone equals new Kindle competitor

Via a quick tweet from John Siracusa, I see that electronic book publisher Fictionwise has released a free e-book reader program for iPhones and iPod Touches (or should it be iPods Touch?) running Apple’s 2.0 operating system. This could be a big deal as Fictionwise is one of the more established players in the e-book game and claims to have 50,000 titles available including works by major authors like Stephen King and Ken Follett.

Interestingly, Fictionwise is a hardware-agnostic publisher. Its web site says books are available in four different locked formats plus unlocked books can be downloaded in 11 formats including one that’s compatible with Amazon’s Kindle e-reader. It’s unclear to me from the description (see picture below) whether you can actually buy and download books from Fictionwise directly using your iPhone, one of the Kindle’s current big advantages over competing readers.

Rex Hammock has been predicting that Apple could eviscerate Amazon’s Kindle with a sexier hardware platform (to oversimplify Rex’s Apple/Kindle post from a few months ago a bit). This isn’t that but it’s certainly a step in that direction. I still see the Kindle as a far superior platform for reading and purchasing ebooks than the current iPhone/iPod Touch gear.

UPDATE: Siracusa says you have to download buy books via a web browser (which of course, the iPhone and iPod Touch have) but can’t do so directly within the e-reader. You then download within the e-reader, he says.

New fictionwise e-book reader application for iphones

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13 responses to “Fictionwise e-reader for iPhone equals new Kindle competitor”

  1. Lee Fyock Avatar
    Lee Fyock

    You have to BUY the books from a browser, but you DOWNLOAD the books from within the eReader application on the iPhone/Touch.

  2. ampressman Avatar
    ampressman

    Thanks, Lee. I misunderstood what John was saying at first but he and
    you both set me straight and I fixed my little addendum.

  3. Rex Hammock Avatar
    Rex Hammock

    Thanks for the shout-out, Aaron. My hypothetical “Kindle-killer” (man, I hate that term) is a larger-format iPod touch — so Apple still hasn't created my dream product. I think the current iPhone is a bit too small a screen for a satisfactory eBook reader experience. That said, I've been trying out a site called TextOnPhone.com that is an iPhone optimized service with thousands of public domain and rights-granted books. I'm reading Cory Doctorow's new book using TextOnPhone. I must admit, having been acclimated to eBooks via the Kindle has made it easier for me to use my iPhone for long-form text reading. The problem with TextOnPhone is that you have to be online so forget reading books on a plane that way.

    Perhaps I learned about the site Feedbooks.com from you, Aaron. I have several books on my Kindle from it — using the amazing Kindle Download Guide. I don't know why TextOnPhone or Feedbooks won't offer an iPhone App that allows one to download a version of the book with an iPhone app.

  4. Hank Avatar
    Hank

    It's a good program, but I hate that I can't load free books from Project Gutenberg or other PDF documents into it.

  5. ampressman Avatar
    ampressman

    That's kind of wacky and too bad. I read a quite detailed, if a little
    bit whiney, critique today.

    http://dearauthor.com/wordpress/2008/07/13/revi…

  6. ampressman Avatar
    ampressman

    And also, “Steve from Fictionwise” comments on that last post from
    dearauthor.com:

    “Yes the current release does just support ereader.com and
    fictionwise.com, but within the next week or so we will open that up
    to any site that offers ereader files, which includes places like
    manybooks.net, diesel-ebooks, booksonboard, etc. We will also support
    Palm Doc and plain text in the near future. We will never be all
    things to all people, though.”

  7. ampressman Avatar
    ampressman

    Ah, here we go, Feedbooks seems to be affiliated with a very different
    new iPhone/iPod touch e-reader called Stanza that looks very slick in
    the demo, allowing you to seamlessly download and read out-of-
    copyright texts and hook up with its Mac desktop program to get
    content in a huge array of unprotected formats, including the much
    whined for/pined for PDF.

    See http://www.lexcycle.com/iphone for the iphone app background info
    and http://www.lexcycle.com/ for info about the desktop product
    (“Stanza features built-in support for HTML, PDF, Microsoft Word, and
    Rich Text Format reading, as well as all the major eBook standards:
    unprotected Amazon Kindle and Mobipocket, Microsoft LIT, Palm doc, and
    the International Digital Publishing Forum's new epub Open eBook
    standard.”)

  8. Dave Avatar
    Dave

    This is a great competitor to the Kindle – I don't WANT a huge ebook reader – the iPhone offers a large enough screen for my eyes, and being a current eReader customer, having the ability to read my existing library on an iPhone, on my PC, and even on a PDA is a big plus.

  9. Sol Young Avatar
    Sol Young

    Bravo – glad to see some reality and focus on the e-reading side of the iPhone.

  10. Roger Kondrat Avatar
    Roger Kondrat

    Rex I like the idea but for me I don't want to go blind and reading on the iPhone's small and low rez screen (relative to paper/eInk) would just kill me.

  11. Roger Kondrat Avatar
    Roger Kondrat

    Rex I like the idea but for me I don't want to go blind and reading on the iPhone's small and low rez screen (relative to paper/eInk) would just kill me.

  12. games Avatar
    games

    This article I so true, keep on writing like this, enjoyment to read :) 434

  13. Gravitational Pull – Insanely great Kindle on iPhone needs one big improvement

    […] Fictionwise e-reader for iPhone equals new Kindle competitor (7/10/2008) Tags: iphone, ipod touch, kindle on iphone, kindle1, kindle2 […]

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