iKindle vs. Stanza – The Cost of Clarity
A lot has been written about Amazon’s recent release of the Kindle iPhone App and comparing it to the other readers available for the device.
My personal favorite is Stanza. There are a lot of reasons, but the main ones include the ability to choose whatever font I want, variably set the font size and text alignment. There’s more but those are the big ones that, to me, make reading text in Stanza a much more enjoyable experience.
But the question that I’m thinking about now is whether or not that clarity is worth the significantly higher book cost.
For example, the book that I’m currently reading in “iKindle” is Chicago by Alaa Al Aswany. The kindle version costs $9.99 from Amazon.
If I wanted to read that same book in Stanza, I would have needed to purchase it though FictionWise. The cost would have been almost double at $17.95 (and that’s generously considering FictionWise’s “rebate” which is just a discount on your next purchase as an actual reduction in the original book’s cost).
I’m hopeful that the other e-book resellers will get a little more aggressive in trying to match Amazon’s Kindle pricing. Alternately, I would be satisfied with some significant improvement in the customization and readability features of their iPhone app.