Best eBook Apps for iPad and iPhone

The best ebook reading app for your iPad or iPhone depends mostly on where you get your ebooks. Each of these apps have basically the same features, so the main issue to consider is the type of ebooks that they support. All of the major ebook sellers have their own ebook app that works only for their ebooks. You can put lots of different ebook apps on your device, though, so that’s not really a problem — it just means that you probably won’t be able to stick to one single app unless you commit to only buying ebooks from one source. If you have a favorite ebook app for iOS, mention it in the comments along with info about what types of ebooks it can use.

iBooks

iBooks is Apple’s native ebook app for iOS. The only thing that’s really important to know about this app is that it is mainly meant to be used with ebooks that you get from Apple’s iBookstore, and won’t work with ebooks that you purchased elsewhere, unless they don’t have DRM.

Use This For: eBooks you purchase in Apple’s iBookstore. Your own PDF, ePubs, or books you created in iBooks Author (only non-DRM). iBooks textbooks are only available for iPad.

iTunes Download: Download iBooks

Kindle

The Kindle app lets you read all of your Kindle ebooks on your iPhone or iPad — no Kindle eReader required. This app will only work with Kindle ebooks that you buy at Amazon.com. (It will also read .mobi files, but only those that do not have DRM, and you won’t find many of those ebooks anymore since Mobipocket is out of operation.)

Use This For: Kindle ebooks that you buy at Amazon.com.

iTunes Download: Download Kindle App

Nook

This is the app from Barnes & Noble that you can use to read your Nook ebooks on your iPad or iPhone. It is only made to read Nook ebooks that you get from Barnes & Noble. That includes all of the magazines that they sell as well.

Use This For: Nook eBooks from Barnes & Noble.

iTunes Download: Download Nook App

Kobo

This is the app from the ebook company Kobo. You can use it to read ebooks that you buy from Kobo, as well as your non-DRM PDFs and ePubs. Kobo is also putting a lot of focus on “social reading” so this app has more of that than apps from other companies.

Use This For: Kobo eBooks from Kobo.com and non-DRM PDFs and ePubs

iTunes Download: Download Kobo App

Bluefire Reader

Bluefire Reader is a great app because it fulfills a need that all the other apps do not: it supports Adobe DRM, so you can read your DRM-protected PDFs and ePubs. If you like to shop at independent ebook stores, this is the ebook app for you. It also reads standard non-DRM PDFs and ePubs. See my Bluefire Reader page for instructions on how this works.

Use This For: DRM and non-DRM PDF and ePub ebooks.

iTunes Download: Download Bluefire Reader

Overdrive

Overdrive Media Console is the app to use for your ebooks and audiobooks that you get from the library. Check with your local library to see if they have ebooks and to get help or technical support.

Use This For: Library ebooks and audiobooks.

iTunes Download: Download Overdrive App

How To Open .acsm Files

ACSM files (files that end with .acsm) often cause confusion for those who are unfamiliar with them. This post will tell you what you need to do to open them.

Basic Information

• ASCM files are part of Adobe’s eBook DRM.
• ACSM files are not supposed to be the full eBook. They are small files that manage the download of the eBook.
• ACSM files are made to be opened with Adobe Digital Editions. This is a free program from Adobe that was created for their eBook DRM. Get it here.
• To open an ACSM file, simply double-click it, and it should open in Adobe Digital Editions if you have that program installed.
• Opening the ACSM file in Adobe Digital Editions will allow it to continue your eBook download. When it’s finished you’ll have a PDF or ePub file.

Advanced Information

Authorization

If you’re downloading an .acsm file, it’s probably an eBook with DRM, so you should also make sure that Adobe Digital Editions is properly authorized. I have a post that explains this process for you. Authorizing your copy of Adobe Digital Editions with an Adobe ID will allow you to use your eBook on more than one computer as well as your mobile devices that support Adobe’s DRM.

ACSM files on iOS, Android, or eReaders

Sometimes people will try to download a DRM-protected PDF or ePub directly to their iPhone/iPad/eReader/Android device. That won’t work because the .acsm file can’t be opened in any apps on those devices. The eBook must be downloaded to your computer first, through Adobe Digital Editions. There is no version of Adobe Digital Editions for iOS, Android, or eReaders. After you’ve downloaded the ebook to your computer, you can then transfer it to your device.

Convert .acsm to PDF?

Often when people are unfamiliar with .acsm files they think they should convert the file to a PDF. This is not possible, and it arises from the mistaken assumption that the .acsm file is the eBook and they’ve somehow downloaded a weird file type. If you have an .acsm file, the only thing you can do is open it with Adobe Digital Editions. That will continue the eBook download process, and once that’s finished, you’ll have your PDF/ePub file.

File Associations

It’s easy for your computer’s file associations to get messed up when you try to open a file in the wrong program. If you’ve downloaded an .acsm file and you tried to open it in, for example, Adobe Reader or Adobe Acrobat, you might have checked the little box that says “Always open files of this type in this program”. If you did that, you’ve screwed up your file associations and .acsm files will always try to open themselves in the wrong program.

To fix this, you’ll need to edit your file associations. Instructions on now to change file associations on a Mac | Instructions on now to change file associations on Windows Vista & 7

How To Open ACSM Files

There are always three ways to open a file on your computer:

1. Double-click it. It will open in the program that your computer has associated with that file type. See above if you’ve associated .acsm files with the wrong program.

2. Right-click it. Right-click the file, go to “Open With”, and choose Adobe Digital Editions.

3. Open manually from inside the program. Open Adobe Digital Editions. In the upper left area, find LIBRARY. Click the downward arrow next to Library, and click on “Open”. Find the file on your computer. It should be in a folder called My Digital Editions, which is in the main Documents folder.

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Get some free ebooks!

Major Publishers Being Sued Over the Agency Model

The United States Department of Justice is suing Apple along with publishers Hachette SA, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin, and Simon & Schuster, for conspiring to raise the prices of ebooks. This article at PC World does a pretty good job of explaining the basics of the situation. Here’s the core of it:

At issue is Apple’s use of the “agency” model of e-book pricing, which lets publishers set their own prices. Apple takes a 30 percent cut of sales, but requires that e-books are sold for no cheaper elsewhere. That approach came into conflict with the “wholesale” model used by Amazon, where the bookseller pays roughly half the recommended cover price, then sets its own pricing.

With the wholesale model, Amazon could offer cut-rate prices on e-books — often $10 for bestsellers — in order to build up its Kindle service. When Apple launched the iPad in 2010, publishers flocked to the agency model, fearing that the wholesale model would lead to a race to the bottom in pricing. Amazon was forced to adopt the agency model, and today, a $10 bestseller is much harder to find. New books tend to sell for around $13 to $15 instead.

Apple and publishers may argue that the agency model leveled the playing field for booksellers, forcing them to compete on hardware and software features instead of pricing. And as Bloomberg points out, e-book sales rose 117 percent in 2011, so it’s hard to argue that higher prices ruined the digital book industry. source

Opinions on this could go either way, but if there really was a conspiracy by the big publishers to raise prices, that would be against the law. This is a big enough story that they even talked about it on the Nightly News with Brian Williams tonight. From my position as someone who works in this industry, it’s all kind of surreal because for the longest time ebooks were overlooked and not taken seriously. Now they’ve become popular and mainstream enough that there are serious legal issues being considered. I also know that the agency model created major headaches for independent ebook sellers, so for that reason it would be kind of nice if it was deemed illegal. However, I can also understand that from a publisher’s point of view, Amazon’s price cutting is very scary for them.

I wonder what actually happened. I remember that Amazon offered most Kindle ebooks for $9.99 in the beginning, and that suddenly stopped once Apple started requiring that publishers couldn’t sell their ebooks for a lower price than the price they set for iBooks downloads. But was that the only thing? Was it solely Apple’s decision, or was there some kind of secret meeting between publishing executives where they sat in a dark room around a table and agreed to raise ebook prices? The truth is probably something in between. It’ll be very interesting to see what comes of this and how it affects ebook prices and publishing in the future.

Harry Potter eBooks

The big ebook news this week is that official Harry Potter ebooks are now available on the Pottermore website.

When I read about this, the first thing I wondered about was what format the ebooks were being made available in, and what kind of DRM they were using. From looking at their supported devices FAQ page, at first it appeared that they were using typical Adobe DRM, since they mention the use of Adobe Digital Editions. However, it seems to be more complicated than that. In order to get ebooks onto a Kindle, for example, they’ve somehow set it up so that you link your account so that the ebook can be delivered to your Kindle. The same goes for your Sony Reader, Nook, or Google Play accounts. Additionally you can download an ePub to your computer. It also appears that you can transfer the ePub to other eReaders with ADE in the same way I’ve outlined on this blog before.

There seems to be more to it, though. Apparently when these ebooks were first announced, the people behind Pottermore claimed that the ePubs would be without DRM. Now it’s become clear that there is some kind of DRM on them, which people are calling “watermarking”. I’ve never even heard of that term being applied to DRM. The Digital Reader has a post about this DRM method and how it was already hacked.

This article on The Guardian is quite interesting. It talks about how Pottermore has managed to force Amazon to bend to its will.

“Instead of buying the ebooks through the Amazon e-commerce system, the buy link takes the customer off to Pottermore to complete the purchase, with the content seamlessly delivered to their Kindle device. It is the first time I’ve known Amazon to allow a third party to “own” that customer relationship, while also allowing that content to be delivered to its device. Amazon gets something like an affiliates’ fee from this transaction, much less than it would expect to receive selling an ebook through normal conditions.”

This is very unlike usual Amazonian practices. I assume it’s because Pottermore wouldn’t allow them to sell the ebooks in any other way, and it shows how much power the Harry Potter brand has. There is another article at FUTUReBOOK by the same author that delves more into this Amazon situation and how DRM is applied across different platforms. The whole system must have been a pretty big undertaking for all companies involved.

All in all, it’s cool to see that there are now official Harry Potter ebooks because that only enforces the idea that ebooks are here to stay, in one form or another. I probably won’t buy them myself since I already own the whole series in old-fashioned paper. Will you?

Recent Stories of Piracy and Plagiarism

eBook piracy and plagiarism are two of the worst fears of authors and publishers. Just like with music and movies, there are now websites that offer many pirated ebook downloads. Plagiarism has been happening for ages and it’s only become easier with books in digital format.

This article on The Guardian paints a new picture for plagiarists, though. Even though it’s easier to copy the contents of an ebook, it’s also easier to get caught now that everything can be scrutinized online. This article is about an author who discovered someone ripping off many of her romance books, only changing major details like names and places. After one instance was discovered, others joined the author in researching the plagiarist’s work, and more and more cases were quickly found. The plagiarist was outed online and forced to pull her stolen work.

In this age of blogs and Twitter, a reputation can be ruined pretty easily. It seems to me like all the trouble of trying to plagiarize isn’t even worth it. If you’re interested in being an author, write your own stuff. If you don’t have any talent for writing then find something else to do.

Piracy is probably the bigger threat since it doesn’t require any work like editing details of the story. Instead, all a person has to do is strip the DRM (if it even exists in the first place). Recently one company was caught selling $99 e-readers pre-loaded with 4000 pirated ebooks. From the article:

An Australian group-buying site owned by Microsoft and Nine sold e-book readers bundled with a treasure trove of thousands of pirated books including the full Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings series.

The matter has prompted a rebuke from the NSW Fair Trading Minister, Anthony Roberts, who claims group-buying sites cannot simply blame vendors when they are caught running dodgy deals.The book industry has reacted angrily and HarperCollins, publisher of some of the major titles contained on the CD including those by J.R.R Tolkien, said its corporate solicitor ”will be ringing them today”.

The site, Cudo.com.au, this week advertised a $99 e-book reader that came with ”4000 e-books you can load from a CD”. Thousands of people signed up for the deal, but the company claims it discovered the books were pirated before orders were shipped.

Cudo’s advertisement originally linked directly to a list of books that came on the bonus CD, and the list contained thousands of books that were still under copyright and available in stores. The site later removed this link from the advertisement, but the original ad is still visible in Google’s cache.

”It’s extraordinary … there’s piracy taking place on a grand scale,” said Australian Booksellers Association chief executive Joel Becker when shown the list of books.

Whether you hate or just tolerate DRM, most publishers will continue to require it as long as they feel that their ebooks will be pirated without it. It’s unfortunate that the average law-abiding user is the one who gets punished by having to deal with DRM restrictions. Authors deserve to get paid for their work just like everyone else, though, so what are they supposed to do? And this time there won’t be another iTunes that comes along and sort-of-transforms the situation like they did with MP3s, because we already have Kindle software and iBooks and other paid ebook services. Unless all of humanity suddenly comes to a state of enlightenment where nobody wants to steal anymore, I don’t know how pirating will ever stop.

Six Tips For Avoiding Display Problems When Creating eBooks

Part of my job over the past 10+ years in the ebook industry has been the creation of ebooks. Over the years the popular formats have changed and the software used to create ebooks has changed, but there are some concepts about text manipulation that have remained constant. Whether you’re creating ebooks for ePub, PDF, iBooks, tablets, smartphones, or Kindle, there are common mistakes that can be avoided. The information I’m presenting here is based on my own experience, so your mileage may vary.

1. Try not to do any conversions straight from Microsoft Word

Microsoft Word is a good program and it’s fine to type your book in it, but Microsoft Word documents don’t convert well into other text formats, like HTML. A lot of ebook creation programs let you import HTML files, which are excellent to use because you can customize the textas much as you want, but the “HTML” that Microsoft Word creates is not really HTML. If you simply take your Word document and “Save As” HTML, you get Microsoft Word’s abomination of HTML, and it doesn’t behave in the same way as real HTML. It’s got a ton of extra junk code in it that isn’t very readable by other programs and you’ll probably end up with a bunch of weird formatting issues.

Instead of using Microsoft Word to create your HTML, make it yourself with a different application. The first step is to save the document as a plain .txt file. Yes, this will strip out all of your formatting, but it will also strip out all of the nonsense code that Microsoft Word creates. I recommend a program like AscToHTM for converting text to HTML, but you can use any other similar program that you like. Make sure you save a copy of your original Word document before you start messing with it.

2. Do small-scale testing

If you’re new to creating ebooks, or if you’re new to text manipulation, or if you’re just new to the particular application that you’re using, do some testing first. For example, copy one chapter of your ebook and make an ebook out of that. This way you can learn how the software behaves without going through all of the work of converting your entire book into ebook format and having to go back and fix mistakes throughout the entire text. You can experiment with things like headings, images, margins, etc, and find out what looks best.

3. Test on an eReader, smartphone, tablet

Test your ebook on as many different types of devices as possible. If you only look at the ebook on your computer screen, you won’t know what it will look like on an eReader, an iPhone, an Android tablet, or whatever else people might read your ebook on. I understand that you might not own all of these devices, but see if you can borrow one from a friend and at least test the ebook on your own phone.

4. Consider small screens

Does your ebook have giant, complicated graphs and charts? Those might not be readable on the small screen of a phone and it will be very important to test it. Images can safely be about 600×400 pixels but even at that size the text will need to be relatively large in order to be readable. If your huge graph has 10pt text that’s imperative for the reader, they’re just not going to be able to read it on small screens.

5. Keep fonts and layout as simple as possible

eReaders like the Kindle, Sony Reader, or Kobo eReader don’t have access to very many fonts. You’ll do best by sticking to the most default font type available. I recommend that you not specify a font at all. That way the eReader can display your text as naturally as possible, and if the ebook reading app does allow the user to change font sizes, they can do that without your book trying to force a font on them.

Footnotes have become a big problem in ebook creation and the reason is, once again, different screen sizes. You have to make an ebook that can display correctly on a computer screen, an eReader, a tablet, and a smartphone, and all of these devices have very different screen sizes. They won’t show the same amount of pages, the same page numbers, or the same amount of text on the screen. This means that you can’t define the bottom of a page for your footnotes because each screen will have a different “bottom” of the page. You could consider moving all of your footnotes to the end of the chapter, and linking to them from the text with hyperlinks.

6. Carefully look through your text

When authors see their book in a different format (say, PDF instead of Microsoft Word) suddenly a lot of typos jump out at them that they didn’t see before. Once you’ve converted your book into .txt, HTML, or an ebook format, you should scan through the entire text to look for errors or typos. You should also scan through the entire text to look for problems that might have been created during the conversion from format to format. You can use this as an opportunity to make sure everything you want to be italic is italic, everything you want to be indented is indented, etc.

All of this might sound like a lot more work that you anticipated, but if you put in the time and effort you’ll end up with a quality ebook, and that’s worth it.

How To Install Aldiko on Kindle Fire

If you’d like to use Aldiko on your Kindle Fire, you can install it via the Fire’s browser. Here’s how:

Before you can install an app that’s not available in the Kindle App Store, you have to change one setting in the Kindle Fire.

• In the top Kindle Fire menu, select the Gear (settings) icon.
• On the next screen, tap the More Icon.
• On the next screen, tap Device. Then choose ON for “Allow Installation of Applications”.

Now you’re ready to download and install Aldiko on your Kindle Fire.

• Open the Kindle Fire’s browser and point it to the latest installation package download of Aldiko at https://aldiko.zendesk.com/entries/402881-download-the-latest-version-of-the-aldiko-book-reader-application#overview
• Download that file to your Kindle Fire.
  When that file is finished downloading, a notifications button will appear in the top menu. Tap on that then select the downloaded Aldiko package.
• On the next screen, tap the Install button.
• You should now have Aldiko installed on your Kindle Fire and it should behave like it does on any Android device.

If you’ve tried this, I’d be interested to hear how it went!

The Art of Google Books

I ran across something really interesting today: The Art of Google Books

It gathers images of scans from Google Books that could be considered art. A lot of them are scans of used books with interesting drawing, writing, or ink in them. Others are mistakes caught by the scanner or odd color corrections. The digitization of old books is a very interesting cross between history and technology. Just to see these images of old books with technological skewing feels like some kind of commentary on the state of humanity.

Here are a couple of my favorites:

In this image, the scanner caught the page being turned.

 

This appears to be a children’s coloring in an old book.

You won’t find this type of stuff in an ebook, that’s for sure. As much as I enjoy the positive aspects of ebooks (like instant delivery and being able to search the text) they will always lack the feel of print-on-paper, and folded page corners, and pages gone brown over time.

How To Put Bluefire Reader on Kindle Fire

Today the folks at Bluefire posted a nice set of instructions for installing Bluefire Reader on your Kindle Fire. The instructions go like this:

The instructions below guide you through the steps for installing Bluefire Reader for Android on your Kindle Fire. Note that you should open this page in the browser on your Kindle Fire before you begin.

•     Tap “Settings” on your Kindle Fire (it’s the icon that looks like a gear)
•     Tap “More”
•     Scroll down until you see “Device”
•     In the Device tab, set “Allow installation of Applications” to ON, and tap OK when you see the Warning prompt
•     Tap here to download the Bluefire Reader APK (the Android app)
•     Once the app has finished downloading, tap the Menu icon at the bottom of the screen and tap Downloads
•     Tap on the file named “BluefireReader.apk”
•     The Fire will ask if you are sure you want to install the app…
•     Tap “Yes”
•     The installation process will start…
•     After the installation is complete, look for Bluefire Reader in your Apps collection

2) The latest version of Bluefire Reader (Version 1.2.3) will be installed on your Kindle Fire. However, the app is not automatically updated. You will need to check back here from time to time to see if there’s an updated version of Bluefire Reader for Android available.

3) This shortcut is offered as is–without any warranties or support.

This is fantastic for users because it means you can read your Adobe DRM ebooks (PDF and ePub) on your Kindle Fire tablet. But while this is an excellent set of instructions for side-loading Bluefire Reader onto your Kindle Fire, I wonder if it’s too complicated for the average user. They even include a note saying that they’re not going to offer support for this. If you have tried this, what did you think of it? Was it easy or difficult for you to do?

It’s really unfortunate that Amazon (and Barnes & Noble as well) aren’t allowing all apps from the Android Market to be installed on their tablets the normal way. In wanting to force people to use their own apps they’re just crippling their own devices.

10 Places To Get Free eBooks

Project Gutenberg

Project Gutenberg has free downloads of public domain works in .txt .html and .epub formats. They were all created by volunteers over the past 15+ years.  These aren’t high quality digital books, but they are free and without DRM, so you can read them on just about any device.

Scribd

Scribd is a service where users can upload their own documents to share with others. You can download those documents or embed them into your website. Not all of the documents are books, but there are lots of books included.

GetFreeEbooks

This site has all legal free downloadable ebooks. I couldn’t find anything on the website saying which formats the ebooks are in, but my guess is that most are PDF.

eBookMall.com

This is a small but growing collection of free ebooks. Downloads are either PDF or ePub. Some are samples but most are full books by modern authors.

MemoWare

MemoWare has a ton of documents and files that are formatted for different devices. They used to advertize devices like Palm and Pocket PC, but now their website says their files also work on Kindle and Nook.

Free Kindle eBooks

Amazon has an entire section of their website with free Kindle ebooks.

Adobe Sample eBook Library

Adobe has a collection of free sample ebooks that you can download for Adobe Digital Editions. They are PDF and ePub formats.

eBookLobby.com

Free ebooks organized into categories. Some are online and some are links to other websites for a download.

Online Books Page

This is a big index of free books that you can find online or for download in PDF format. You could kind of consider it a Wikipedia for free ebooks.

Free online personality test

Here is a great free online personality test that will help you find out your personality type according to the Myers Briggs theory based on Jung.

Free-eBooks.net

With the free account option you can get access to HTML ebooks and up to 5 downloads in PDF or TXT.