The beauty of E-books, whether they're free mobi format ebooks , which can be read by Kindle, or the popular epub format is that they're swift to produce and distribute. Of course electronic books don't take up the same space as traditional paperbacks and hybrid books have even started to be produced. Many book apps for Apple have been recently featured on Gametrender and have proved to be very popular downloads.Whilst I personally prefer Science-Fiction and Fantasy ebooks (I'm almost at the end of the brilliant Malazan Fantasy series by Steven Erikson that is on my Kindle, amongst my peers I've also found George RR Martin's Game of Thrones on a number of their Kindles and on some Luddites coffee tables in the form of (gasp) paperbacks). However, most of my recent interactive book app reviews have been for Children's ebooks on iPad , not quite my idea of late night reading-but the kids do love this new form of hybrid book.
I'm on a prolonged business trip at the moment so am highly reliant on my Kindle for entertainment as I can't lug around the six books that I would read in two months for lack of luggage room. On a previous business trip I hadn't yet got my Kindle, so had to rely on the Kindle App for my iPod Touch . The Kindle App of course works just fine, as you'd expect from an official Amazon reading App. But the natural limitation of ebook reading on an iPod or iPhone is the small screen. Many people complain that the backlight on the Phones screen hurts their eyes when they're reading iPhone books , but I never found that problem.
That said, I still favour my Kindle over iOS e-reading as the e-ink the Kindle uses shows up a lot easier in bright light such as the sun, and of course the almost month long battery life is phenomenal. I highly recommend the Official Amazon Kindle cover though. For two reasons the Kindle cover is an essential purchase: Firstly if you're going to be doing any sort of e Book reading without a source of light you're going to be reduced to going old school and using a torch to read your Kindle. While this is of course quaint, reminding me of childhood , geeky days of reading under the bed covers while supposed to be sleeping, I'm now 34 and this is 2012 so reading habits need to progress after all!
Of course when I slightly baulked at the price of an Amazon Kindle cover I still had a bit of last year's Christmas money left over and took the plunge to buy a cover for my Kindle. My Father-in -Law went in the opposite direction and bought a cheaper unofficial Kindle cover. After two months he'd seen the light, literally , and swopped his unofficial Kindle cover for an official Amazon cover. Firstly as I'd already pointed out the official cover with it's grainy leather is a lot more robust and just nice to touch . On a tactile level the Official Kindle cover just blows away the competition . The colours are really nice too, I chose a modest dark blue cover for my Kindle, whereas he went for the traditional black,leather Kindle cover. There's a range of colours too (I agonised for ages over whether my e-reader cover would look better in burgundy,burnt orange but finally compromised on a blue Kindle cover!)
Now aside from a lovely feel to the official Kindle Cover the other major advantage and the reason that my Father-in-law soon discarded his cheaper cover is the backlight. A very bright back light which fortunately mostly illuminates the ereaders page( a bit of light spill can keep your partner awake , but nothing turning on your side to read won't fix) Even though the dad in laws cheap Kindle cover had a built in light, this light ran off penlight batteries and soon drained of power. The official cover slots nicely into the Kindle with two little copper tags and the cover's light is actually powered off of the Kindle's own battery. With very little to no depreciation of the Kindle batteries awesome power. So all in all highly recommended, the
Now I haven't just written this article to sell you a Kindle cover! So back to my previous analysis of ereaders! Now that I've got a Kindle the only thing that slightly disappoints is the lack of colour. Not a problem for generic ebook reading but I really do love my comics and that is where the iPad or Kindle Fire come into play. Both present exceptional ways to read a graphic novel on an e-reader and definitely will be explored further in a follow up article. For now here's that link to Free Smashing Magazine for Kindle or iPad that I promised.
And the link to Amazon for the original Kindle Cover (the updated Kindle cover or a cover for the Kindle Fire can also be purchased here)
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