Technologist Jason Perlow has done an analysis of e-book reading apps available on your iPad, and it would be a good idea for you to see what he has to say before downloading any of them.

“The average iPad user may not be aware of features or limitations in the various e-Reader apps available on the App Store,” he says, “so I’m going to try to boil this down so that you can make the appropriate choices which best fit your reading lifestyle.”

You may be surprised, maybe even shocked, by his conclusions. Here in condensed form are his takes on some of the more prominent apps.

iBooks

“While there is no doubting iBooks’ success in terms of its widespread use, of all the reader applications we’ve looked at, it is actually the least functional. Apple designed iBooks to behave and act like a real book, and focused more on the aesthetics and UI than actual App functionality with the initial release….”

“iBooks supports syncing of DRM-free EPUB and PDF content directly to the iPad thru iTunes. This is an excellent feature, but essentially locks the user down to using iTunes as the primary data transfer mechanism and thus requires a host PC or Macintosh in order to maintain the library…”

“Unfortunately, iBooks doesn’t scale very well as the size of your EPUB library increases. While iBooks is perfectly fine for a few dozen or perhaps a hundred or so books purchased from the iBooks Store or synced into iTunes, it is extremely unwieldy once you approach 300+ titles loaded into the database.”

[One issue Perlow doesn't mention is cited by blogger Thomas Baekdal, who writes: "You've already purchased this book but it isn't available for redownload. To purchase it again at full price, tap OK" and his comment is, "ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME?!?!?"]

Kindle for iPad

“Amazon still has the widest array of paid ebook content in existence, with well over 600,000 titles in inventory. However, from a feature perspective, the Kindle software is pretty weak when compared to its hardware counterpart — you can’t import other file formats into it (such as PDFs or .MOBI files) and it only works with titles you’ve purchased in the Kindle store.”

Barnes & Noble eReader

“Of all the paid content readers, by far the best one in existence is probably the Barnes & Noble eReader application. About the only negative thing I can say about it is that like Kindle for iPad, the application is limited to content purchased on the B&N website, and uses the same Safari web interface for purchasing.”

“Other than that flaw, I love this app — the reading experience is far superior to that of the Kindle application, as it has five customizable themes for different colors of text and background and has the best reading fonts I’ve seen in any of the apps I looked at, especially when viewed in the ‘Earl Grey’ theme that almost has me convinced I’m looking at e-Ink and not an LCD.”

“Margins can be adjusted directly from page view to make maximum use of the screen if you’d like. The content browsing interface is also much more elegant than that of iBooks or Kindle for iPad.”

Kobo Reader / Borders eBooks

“Kobo Reader for iPad is…extremely polished and very well-designed.
Kobo’s main benefit is that it supports many different computing and smartphone platforms, so you can have all of your content available with you wherever you go. Like Kindle and B&N, your content is stored in Kobobooks.com’s cloud, so it doesn’t matter if you are using Kobo for iPad, iPhone, Android, BlackBerry, Palm, PC or Mac…”

“The Kobo reader application is one of the nicest looking on the iPad platform, although it isn’t nearly as feature rich as B&N’s or Stanza from a pure reading perspective. However, the text display is very nice, and you have four scalable fonts to choose from plus a White-on-Black “Night Reading” mode.”

Stanza

“Of all the applications listed here, Stanza is actually a very mature e-reader app, this despite only very recently being made iPad-native with version 3, in early June…
Stanza is by far the most sophisticated e-Reader application for iPad, as it supports not only the open EPUB format but also the legacy Mobipocket, PalmDoc (DOC), Microsoft LIT formats as well as HTML, PDF, Microsoft Word and Rich Text Format (RTF). This built-in compatibility eliminates the need for book conversion to EPUB with applications such as Calibre…”

“In addition to its connectivity features, Stanza has access to a wide variety of free book feeds… It has a wide array of font styles and color themes, and many options for text layout…”

“If you have lots of content that you’ve collected over the years, Stanza is definitely a must-have app. There’s absolutely no downside, it’s free to use and does more than any e-book reader app on this list.”

For the complete article, check out Apple iPad Showdown: Battle of the eReader Apps

Richard Curtis

Danielle Belopotosky is a dedicated “real-book person” but was prepared to keep an open mind as she road-tested the Kindle 2, a variety of Sony readers and some iPhone nouvellement arriveés like the Stanza and Shortcovers. The net result is that she’s still a dedicated real-book person, but now maybe a little less so. “I’ve come around on my opposition to e-book. Somewhat,” she grudgingly admits in her New York Times e-book survey.

Not surprisingly she devotes most of her attention to the Kindle 2 and echoes many of the positive reviews we recently assembled including our own. But she does have some issues:

The new Kindle is thinner than the original and has a sharper screen with more shades of gray, producing easy-to-read, crisp text in any light. But while the Kindle is nice to look at, it is a pain to navigate. There’s a five-way joystick that you can use to maneuver through menus, but it’s stiff and tough to master. Would a touch screen be too much to ask?

The keyboard lets you add notes to text, but no one is going to want to write a novel of their own using its small plasticky buttons. Also, Amazon’s page numbering system is ridiculous: Instead of “page 23,” you get data such as “location 47-82” and “2%” along the bottom of the screen. After using the Kindle for a week, I still don’t know what all that means.

She likes many things about Sony’s PRS-700, especially its touch screen, virtual keyboard, easy page numbering and access to many book websites and digital libraries. Some other functions, especially the annoying difficulties of downloading e-books via cable instead of wirelessly as in the Kindle, got lower marks from Belopotosky.

Check out A Walk Through a Crop of Readers and note what she has to say about the hot-off-the-press Shortcovers.

Despite increased respect for e-books Belopotosky will stand pat with book-books “unless Amazon comes out with a special ‘book scented’ Kindle.” Don’t laugh: if Amazon can make a book talk, they can make it smell.

RC