While some of us love our paper books, lugging those fairytales, comedies and romantic novels around can be back-breaking. Luckily, with the explosion of internet powered mobile devices and apps available, it’s possible to carry thousands of titles around in your pocket.
So which of these modern eReaders are worth keeping and where are the best places to buy and find eBooks? We asked around the iiOffice and put together a quick rundown of the best e-reading resources for all our bookworm customers out there!
eBook Readers
When it comes to eReaders, there are basically two primary options. Namely, whether to go with an ‘e-ink’ based reader, or a traditional mobile device. Electric ink readers like the Amazon Kindle, or Kobo range are specialised reading devices with a monochrome display designed to closely mimic natural paper. These devices have high brightness, no glare, and great contrast, making them better for the heavy readers out there. Electronic ink readers also have much better battery-life than standard mobile devices, so you won’t find yourself eating up your data.
Alternatively, if you’re new to the eReading scene and you already have an Android or Apple tablet, perhaps give those a try. Tablet screens are getting higher and higher resolution with each new generation, making them more and more suited to long-form reading.
EBook Stores
Amazon has always been king when it comes to books. The Amazon Kindle store offers the largest selection of eBooks of any online store, both paid and free. Books are only available in the proprietary Kindle format, however there are apps available on all major smartphone platforms that will let you read the Kindle format on a standard mobile device. The Amazon Kindle Bookstore also offers a subscription service, but only on a small subset of all available titles.
In addition to its eReader devices, Kobo also has an app and online bookstore with over 5 million titles.
You’ll also find a wide variety of discounts and promotions available as well as the ability to send eBooks as gifts to friends and family. Kobo also has a self-publishing e-book platform known as Writing Life.
The Google Play store has a wide selection of eBooks available, as well as the ability for customers to publish up to 1000 DRM free EPUB or PDF books, as long as each file is below 50MB.
Free eBook Resources
Project Gutenberg was started by Michael Hart in 1971 with the digitisation of the United States Declaration of Independence. Since then, Project Gutenberg is affectionately known as the world’s oldest digital library. It’s a volunteer effort to digitise and archive cultural works. There are over 50,000 items in their collection in a variety of popular formats including plain text, HTML, PDF, EPUB, MOBI, and Plucker. Usage is completely free because the website is maintained by donations from the public.
Inspired in part by the mission of Project Gutenberg, Manybooks was founded in 2004 with the vision to provide an extensive library of books in digital format for free on the Internet. ManyBooks has over 33,000 titles in its collection including many literary classics, so we recommend you take a look now!
Open Library is an online project intended to create “one web page for every book ever published”.
Originally founded by Reddit co-founder Aaron Swartz, it provides access to many public domains and out-of-print books, which can be read online. As of May 2010, the website has over 1 million titles available in formats that accessible for people who are print-disabled.
Do you have a go-to solution for reading while on the move? Let us know in the comments.
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