eReading on the iTouch

So I just finished my first novel length read using Stanza on the iTouch and the experience wasn’t too bad.  Stanza is a free ebook application for the iTouch/iPhone.  The layout is pretty straight forward and given that it’s on the iTouch the resolution is great.  The portability off the iTouch was pretty useful and allowed me to read whether I had a half hour or only a few minutes of spare time, something a dedicated ereader like the Kindle doesn’t lend itself to so well.

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But even with the portability the actual cost of ebooks is prohibitive.  If this one hadn’t had been free I’d have never read  it on here.

Stanza uses a number of services that offer book downloads but many mainstream titles still cost $10 or more, some pricing out as much as if not more than the cost of the paperback of the book itself.  It’s hard to justify spending so much on a digital copy of something I can find available in hardcopy as a bargain book or online for under $10.  It’s the same stance I take with digital music through iTunes, at $10 an album I’m really better off dropping the extra few bucks to get the real CD and ripping to my computer.

I’m a very huge fan of actually having a book or disc in hand.  Not only does it look impressive on my shelf (except maybe for the graphic novels, those only impress my dork friends), but they last.  My library is something I can lend to friends or pass down to my children.  I can’t do that with a digital ebook that I never really own thanks to DRM or locking it to a platform like the Kindle.

What Stanza does provide is access to free downloads of public domain books.  Among the services it links to is Project Gutenberg, giving anyone access to thousands of classics that one can read for class or pleasure.  Other services offer free short stories or full works from authors and publishers willing to give them away.  You won’t find a lot of mainstream authors or titles, but you can find some good stories you might otherwise miss.

Perhaps more of this will happen as ereaders and ebooks  become more heavily used: authors and publishers giving some things away as a tease to buy more.  But the price point has got to come down if it’s going to be successful, or a rental model will develop to turn an ereader into more of a digital library a la Netflix instead of a digital bookshelf ($30 a  month, unlimited ebooks, access to two at a time, patent pending).

UPDATE: Well, surprise, surprise.  On Monday the New York Times reported that Amazon bought Lexcycle

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, the company that made Stanza.  From the Lexcycle blog:

We are not planning any changes in the Stanza application or user experience as a result of the acquisition. Customers will still be able to browse, buy, and read ebooks from our many content partners. We look forward to offering future products and services that we hope will resonate with our passionate readers.

This comes hot on the tail of Amazon releasing a Kindle application for the iTouch with the release of the Kindle 2.  The app was interesting but not quite as straightforward as Stanza, nor did it link to any services other than Amazon.  It did allow syncing between Kindle purchases and the iTouch, but as someone who didn’t have a Kindle and already had and used Stanza that really didn’t matter to me.  Here’s hoping Amazon doesn’t break Stanza.