Bookshelf is the pro creation of Zac Bedell who developed the very first ebook reader for the iPhone. It costs $9.99 and comes with a java based shelfserver which provides a fairly easy way to load ebooks onto your iPhone. There were two things missing from the old Books.app and one was an annotation function and the other was the ability to use the volume buttons to go forward and backward in the book. I don’t see either on the list of features for the pro (pay) version. Hopefully there will be enough iPhones left tomorrow when I go that I’ll be able to try these ereaders out.
BookShelf current supports the following book formats with more on the way:
- Plain Text [.txt]
- HTML with images [.html]
- FictionBook2 with images [.fb2]
- PalmDoc / AportisDoc [.pdb]
- MobiPocket (unencrypted) [.pdb, .prc, .mobi]
- Plucker with images [.pdb]
via Bookshelf.
So are you getting another iPhone? did something happen to the old one? or upgrading? Nosy readers want to know!
Oh, I probably just missed some post somewhere that explains all this.
I downloaded it and installed it on my old iPhone after installing iTunes 7.7 and upgrading my phone to 2.0. So far I’m not impressed because I can’t connect to my bookshelf at all.
I was hoping this would be easier than hacking the iPhone and doing the workaround to move books over, but it isn’t since it’s not working. :(
Hopefully others will have a better experience.
Sent an email to Zac and was immediately answered. In a matter of minutes my problems were fixed and I’m happily reading on my iPhone. (Well, I would be, if I weren’t working. Cough.)
Kudos to Zac for the great customer service. I’m definitely a fan of this application.
[...] This was the first ebook reader for the iPhone and now it is a paid book app (9.99). It reads multiple formats for plain text (.txt), .html with [...]