I have been using the Kindle for iPhone app on my iPodTouch and iPhone recently. I refuse to pay for an e-book (yet), but I have downloaded a few free books from Amazon. It’s ok. I basically use it while nursing or on the Metro. Right now I’m reading some Sherlock Holmes stories.
One annoying thing, though, is that there is no way to load a Kindle-formatted book into the app that doesn’t come through the Amazon store. Or ift here is, I haven’t found it yet. That’s aggravating as I am moderately intrigued by Doctorow’s new book, but none of the other free e-formats appeal to me for reading it and I’m not sure I want to pay for a dead-tree version yet.
I saw a rumor recently that Kindle for the Mac proper is coming soon. Maybe that one will let me load documents not “purchased” through Amazon.com.
I hear excellent things about the free reader app Stanza. And I hear there are good tools for the Mac for getting content in many formats onto the iPhone. But while I have the app I haven’t really had time to mess around with it. Maybe I’ll see if I can get Doctorow’s book onto it and check it out.
You know what I want? I want an e-book that works like Rhapsody. I want to pay a fee to access novels, newspapers, magazines, etc. It would be great if it was exactly like Rhapsody and I could access the electronic books indefinitely, but if I could only have them on my device for a limited time (say 3 months or so), that would be fine. I imagine that I would use an e-book for fiction mostly, and light reading of newspapers and other media, and I don’t care one way or the other if I actually own those things. It would be kinda like an electronic lending library.
If you do decide to try out the Stanza iPhone app, I noticed that Makers is available (for free) through the Feedbooks Online Catalog, which is one of the default catalogs included with the app.
I also noticed that Doctorow’s page now has the book in Kindle format, but I haven’t figured out how to get it into the iPhone app.