It’s not for everyone, but some of us have found it a delight to be able to read on our phones. I’ve read dozens of books on my phone (including War and Peace) and loved it.

Your experience may vary.

Interesting. But I don’t try it.
It’s too small.

For a real ebook reader like me, I always use MS Reader on a PocketPC. I do think the Apple screen is fab, and would make a really good reader, but you are all wasting your time if you think people will fiddle about for hours and end up with a poor, just-about-works-if-you-do-this-and-this-and-this approach. You need a standard reader with auto reflow, bookmarking and font sizing. That’s it! Its not rocket science.

Why Apple did not do this is beyond me – the number one requirement beyond voice, music and video is always an ebook reader. HTC wins yet again.

Try
http://BooksoniPhone.com
BooksoniPhone.com is a leading iPhone eBooks portal featuring over 20,000 full books you can read on your iPhone.

BooksoniPhone.com has released the first version of its service for reading e-books on Apple’s iPhone.

BooksoniPhone allows iPhone users to view electronic books (eBooks), text files, and documents on-the-go and features a native iPhone interface to navigate as well as read titles when browsing BooksoniPhone.com.

No additional applications, downloads, or other software is required. Users can instantly read and choose from 20,000+ titles utilizing powerful search or browsing thru recommendations (Top 100 Books, Children’s Books, Book d’jour, etc.). The Iphone interface enables users to create read list and add multiple books for simultaneous reading. (System remembers where you left.)

Adding notes and sharing them is nice feature that allows users to add and share personal notes that is attached to the page they were reading. Unique feature that opens opportunity to read same book with someone and exchange comments.

BooksoniPhone.com leverages the Safari browser built in to the Apple iPhone and Ajax technology. It features:

- Virtual keyboard for typing and adding books to read list

- Tap on screen to go to next page

- One-tap ‘Share the Page’ button for e-mailing

- Adjustable font size for easy reading

- Variable number of pages per screen

- Portrait or Landscape mode for easy reading

- Touch screen Scrolling

The site is accessible only from iPhone for reading, and from any browser for uploading texts, books, poems, documents, lyrics. There is no limit for text storage per account in this moment.

Service is free and has no-spam policy.

The Ebooks that give helpful and interesting information targeted towards a marketplace where there is demand will bring forth sales. Ebooks necessitate very small experience in footing of creating them. If person makes the selling properly, important gross sales.

I shot a short video demonstrating WOWIO pdf files on the iPhone adapted via a free app called Filemark Maker to the data URI scheme mentioned previously:

http://wowio.wordpress.com/2007/08/01/iphone-and-ebooks-the-video/

Casual testing showed this to work reliably with 1 meg pdf files. Graphics, layout and typography all displayed without a hitch.

http://BooksoniPhone.com

There is place for reading books on iphone!!!

Access thousands of books for FREE on iPhone.

Booksoniphone.com is optimized for reading on iPhone !!!

Fast, no dowmloads, multiple books reading, notes, etc.

You can upload your e-books and booksoniphone.com will convert it for you (for free) so you can read it any time, any place !!!

Go booksoniphone.com !!!

I hope Apple is paying attention to how much people want eBooks on the iPhone. I long for 99-cent eBooks!! I’d wind up buying more eBooks than songs, easily.

Marc, you’re on the iPhone now!

Thanks for the shout out on the book Kevin (and for the great assist you and JK provided when I was writing it). I hadn’t realized the book had been “upgraded” to online reading. Pretty darn cool. I’ve upgraded a couple of books I have found it useful to have accessible online. I’ll see how they fare on the iPhone as soon as time permits.

>>>(By the way, a palm lifedrive with the extended battery makes for the best dedicated ebook reader under 250 bucks)

WTF? You must still have the HD in your LD. Mine is CF-based and I can do at *least* three *hours* of *video*. I haven’t tried ebooks. Too much to read on paper right now…

Chuck your HD and go CF. You can ditch the extra battery. (And by the way, my CFed LD was below $150 total!)

You can drop that cruddy Microsoft reader by using the freeware Amber Lit Converter: http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
It’ll convert those pesky .lit books to practically any format, including PDFs and palm database files. It’ll even let you enter a folder ad convert everything in that folder and all subfolders at the same time. A warning, though, if you try to batch convert more than about 20 a time it’ll freeze on you. One wonders why you’re trying to do ebooks on an iphone at all, isn’t it uncomfortable turning pages by touching the screen?

(By the way, a palm lifedrive with the extended battery makes for the best dedicated ebook reader under 250 bucks)

Hello there,

Actually there is at least another solution/trick.
Safari for iphone is able to render data URI scheme that can actually contain full HTML pages even when not connected.
Look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data:_URI_scheme for tecnical explanations.
There is a size limitation (4kB?)

You will find a useful and simple way to store your PDF or HTML content offline in your bookmarks at:
http://software.hixie.ch/utilities/cgi/data/data

I actually built a few ebooks for iPhone this way – 1 bookmark by chapter to make them easy to read.

Hope it helps

Scotty, I agree with you completely, the pics aren’t a great representation of the screen clarity. However, I find that the font in Safari is much cleaner looking than the Times Roman font used for the book. The more you zoom though, the cleaner it looks.

Thanks, Mike! Ur in my feedz, but I’m slo 2day.

Link luv:
http://mikecane.wordpress.com/2007/07/19/ebooks-on-iphone-another-person-who-wont-wait-for-apple/

And I’ve been writing about ebooks on the iPhone.

You just haven’t been reading my blog.

But you have an iPhone, so all is forgiven (not!).

You can click on a URL to a PDF document in Safari and the iPhone will launch its built in PDF viewer to display it.

I’ve got my own Digital Bookshelf of iPhone PDF’s which is simply an HTML file on my own web server that points to various PDF’s of interest to me. I click on the bookmark I have stored on my iPhone and then touch a link on that page to open the ebook.

Now if they had the ability to hand off a bookmark or page # via the URL….

By the way, the photos above are out of focus and don’t do the iPhone justice. Text is very crisp on the iPhone.