HarperCollins to make book excerpts available on iPhone
For those of you who have jumped on the iPhone band wagon, you will soon be able to get read book excerpts from publishing giant HarperCollins. The company announced that it will make book excerpts available via their website.
"Reaching consumers on mobile devices and the Internet is increasingly important for publishers," Brian Murray, president of HarperCollins Publishers Worldwide, said in a statement that noted the publisher has some 10,000 titles already digitized.
While I applaud any and all efforts to get books, whether in print or digital form, out to consumers, I’m not sure how effective a cell phone will be. The biggest problem is reading the small text on such a small screen. Even the iPhone, which boasts a larger screen than most cell phones, would certainly place undue strain on the reader’s eyes. This is the reason why ebooks never caught on on the iPod.
But HarperCollins is moving in the right direction. Maybe I’m wrong and these book excerpts on the iPhone will be a huge success. I hope I am wrong here.
However, if publishers want to reach the masses with digital titles, then they should throw out their dreams of proprietary exclusiveness and collaborate to produce a standard for digital publishing – including a reading device to consume digital products with.
Sony came close with their digital ebook reader, but the expensive device relies on proprietary technology that is cumbersome with even the most standard electronic publishing programs (ie. PDF). However, in their defense, the device makes reading very easy and pleasurable with their e-ink technology that makes the words on the screen appear as they would on the pages of a book.
If anyone out there in cyberspace has experienced these book excerpts on their iPhone, I certainly want to hear from you. Please leave a comment and let us know what you think. Are the book excerpts easy to read? Are they easy to access? How does the iPhone perform as a potential ebook reader?
I look forward to hearing from you!
Check out the Yahoo! article here:
Book excerpts to be viewed on iPhone
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