You thought your iPhone was primarily a telephone. Wrong. Then you decided it actually was mostly a computer. Right. Finally, you discovered it was not just a telephone and a computer, but also a travel guidebook, too. Right again — almost; it’s actually a guidebook library. Here are two popular places to buy electronic books to carry around on your iPhone (I have the 3GS model) or other portable electronic devices and how they compare: Amazon.com (Kindle Books) or Apple (iBooks).
Available Guidebooks
Amazon.com offers nearly 3,000 electronic “Kindle Book” travel guidebooks that you can download and read on a computer, iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, Android phone, or Blackberry. This means you don’t need to buy the Kindle e-reader to read Kindle Books, although Amazon.com’s new “Kindle 3” might appeal to those who don’t need the “computer” features of Apple’s “i” gadgets or other vendors’ smartphones. That’s a pretty small number compared to the nearly 100,000 printed travel books that Amazon.com sells on-line, but it does include titles from several publishers such as Rough Guide, Lonely Planet, and Rick Steves. (Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be a way to sort the listings by publisher or travel destination).
When it released the iPad earlier this year Apple gave users of that device, the iPhone, and iPod Touch the ability to purchase and download electronic “iBooks.” I downloaded the free “iBooks” app to my 3GS, typed in the word “travel” in the “Search” window and came up with 1,182 books. But when I narrowed my search to “travel guides”, only 134 were listed, and “travel guidebooks” produced zero search results.
Using the iBooks app “Browse” function to explore the “Travel & Adventure” Category where books are listed by author’s name, not publisher or destination, only gave me two choices: “Top Paid” (including Jane Austen and Nevada Barr) and “Top Free” (listing, among others, Louisa May Alcott and Horatio Alger), all well-known as authors, but not as travel guidebook writers. I found European travel guru Rick Steves’ Travel As A Political Act under that Category, but none of his country or city travel guidebooks (which don’t seem to be available at all through iBooks; perhaps Rick’s publisher has an exclusive electronic book distribution deal with Amazon.com).
I located just five of Lonely Planet’s guides (each selling for $14.99, and only one’s for Europe) on the iBookstore; Amazon.com listed 655 Kindle Books from this popular guidebook publisher covering far more destinations.
Try Before You Buy
Both Amazon.com and Apple let you download a sample portion of an electronic book before making your decision to buy it.
Make A Note of It, Change the Look of It, and Look For It
You can insert bookmarks, highlight text, and add your own “notes in the margin” to these highly portable Kindle and iBooks editions. Both let you flip through the pages or jump to a specific section using hyperlinks in the Table of Contents. Both will take you back to where you left off when you re-open the e-book and resume reading.
You can change the size and color (black, white, or sepia) of the text of Kindle Books; iBooks also lets you change the font typeface and adjust the screen lighting. iBooks have a little more “elegant” look to them than their Kindle cousins, but both are quite readable, even on the iPhone’s little screen.
You can search for specific words in both types of e-books; in an iBook you can also run a search on Google or Wikipedia or find the definition of a word using a built-in dictionary.
Buying E-Books
Once you have installed the Kindle Reading App, click on “Get Books” on your iPhone or “Shop in Kindle Store” on your computer to go directly to the Kindle Store on Amazon.com and purchase e-books. But unlike music, apps, and even audiobooks, you won’t find iBooks catalogued on the iTunes Store and cannot download them directly to your computer as you can with Kindle Books; you have to buy iBooks from your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch.
Cross-Platform Reading
My favorite feature about Kindle Books is the ability to read a “KB” on all of my electronic devices. So if I’m planning a trip to London, I can read Rick Steves’ London guidebook ($9.99 Kindle version) on my desktop computer’s large monitor, make notes about places I want to visit, and then re-open the guidebook and read my notes on my netbook computer when I’m in my London hotel room preparing for a day’s outing or on my iPhone when I’m out and about in the city . (Click here to read more about using Kindle Books on multiple devices).
After you’ve downloaded an iBook to your iPhone and sync the phone to your computer, your iBook will show up in your iTunes Library. (Click here for FAQs about iBooks). But, as far as I can tell, the sync process won’t actually let you read the iBook on your computer as you can do with a Kindle Book. Here’s what Apple says about the synch process:
“Books downloaded from the iBookstore can be placed on up to five computers you own that you’ve authorized with your iTunes Store account. You can sync your books to all iPads, iPhones, and iPod touches you own. Audiobooks, PDF files, and ePub files you’ve added to iTunes will appear in Books under Library. To sync Books to your device, connect it to your computer using the cable it came with. In iTunes, select your device then click the Books tab. Choose the books you would like to read on your device then press Sync. Books will sync to iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch even if iBooks is not installed; to read synced books, download iBooks from the App Store.
Note: Samples downloaded from the iBookstore will not sync to your computer. They remain on your device and can be removed using iBooks.”
Pricing
E-books are not necessarily cheap, although some may cost less than the print version of the same book. Lonely’s Planet’s Discover France costs $14.99 from Apple iBooks (and either slightly more or less in print from Amazon.com). A different Lonely Plant Kindle Book guidebook for France sells for $14.84 (and a different LP print version goes for a little more or a little less).
And The Winner Is…
Sorry, Steve Jobs, Kindle Books is the best choice. There are far more books available from Amazon.com than from the Apple iBookstore, especially in the realm of travel guidebooks, and the ability to read Kindle Books on all of my computer devices “sealed the deal” for me in favor of Amazon.
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2011 Dick Jordan
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