eBook reader for the iPhone released

Books.app is a new, basic eBook reader binary for the iPhone that requires books to be transferred to the device via the iPHUC tool. The application reads HTML and text files stored in a media/eBooks folder, and is smart enough to enter subdirectories, if, for instance, you've broken a book down by chapters. The author states "Eventually, this project will include a simple method of syncing eBooks to your iPhone. [...] I have [...] included a copy of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, which you can download here and expand into your Media/EBooks directory on your iPhone, so you can easily judge the reading experience."

Books.app is recommended for use with Project Gutenberg texts, in conjunction with GutenMark, the PG markup tool by Ronald Burkey, which makes HTML out of Gutenberg .txt files, and splits them by chapter using a second tool. However, installation is "not for the faint of heart." It requires jailbreaking your iPhone and several more involved steps.

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nhmlco

Apple should get on board

08/13, 3:11am, EDT

Apple should get on board and do for ebooks what they've done for tunes and are doing for video. With the iPhone, and presumably future wide-screen iPods, we have the player(s). Now all we need is the content... at a reasonable price.

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LouZer

Re: apple should..

08/13, 7:32am, EDT

One problem is coming up with 'a reasonable price'. Publishers don't like to charge reasonable prices for this stuff. Look at the high-cost of Audiobooks. The second is that Apple's all about the audio, and wants to push people to Audiobooks. The third is that they'd need to do DRM-text, which won't be too popular, either (looking at how popular it is now).

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