HarperCollins Offers Limited Ebook Content for iPhone
By Jane • Aug 15th, 2007 • Category: Publishing News • •
HarperCollins is making iPhone compatible ebook content available. iPhone users can go to http://mobile.harpercollins.com and view the first 10 pages of chapters one and two of 14 books released in August and September. There will be a link to pre-order/order the book from a list of retailers.
Titles to be made available include:
- The Art of Power by Thich Nhat Hanh (HarperOne)
- Beyond the Body Farm by Bill Bass (William Morrow)
- The Burnt House by Faye Kellerman (William Morrow)
- The Case for the Real Jesus by Lee Strobel (Zondervan)
- Ike: An American Hero by Michael Korda (HarperCollins)
- A Killer’s Kiss by William Lashner (William Morrow)
- Life on the Refrigerator Door by Alice Kuipers (HarperCollins)
- Love Is a Many Trousered Thing by Louise Rennison (HarperTeen)
- Now and Forever by Ray Bradbury (William Morrow)
- Obama: From Promise to Power by David Mendell (Amistad)
- Soul Catcher by Michael C. White (William Morrow)
- Sweet Revenge by Diane Mott Davidson (William Morrow)
- When the Game Is Over, It All Goes Back in the Box by John Ortberg (Zondervan)
- Winning by Jack Welch & Suzy Welch (Collins)
Unfortunately, you cannot order the ebook version of the book and download it your iPhone for reading. Nor is the content actually optimized for the iPhone. I picked Obama’s book and the first three pages consisted of his picture (the cover), a dark background of the flyleaf of his book that was virtually unreadable because of the tiny text size, and the title. The pages of the book appeared to be scanned-in and not digitized. The pages do not respond to the double tap feature which allows a user to double tap a column of text and have that column of text be resized to fit the screen. There were significant margins on either side and the text did not reflow to the screen (i.e., when I pinch expanded the screen to increase the font, the text did not re-order to fit the screen. It merely got larger so I had to scroll from side to side to read the sentence.)
This is a neat idea, but it’s very poorly executed. I don’t find it useable at all.
Jane is a long time romance reader whose passion is, you guessed it, reading. Jane also does not like to talk about herself in the third person, but apparently this is the way that this biography thing works (although in a true biography, someone else would be writing this blurb). Anyway, currently Jane loves urban fantasy authors Patricia Briggs and Ilona Andrews. She's really excited about this year's crop of historicals including Joanna Bourne's The Spymaster's Lady and Sherry Thomas' Private Arrangements and the upcoming Loretta Chase Her Scandalous Ways.
She's looking for a good contemporary author. Email her with a recommendation!
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