So I'm sure there are similar threads out there dealing with general android devices, but I thought since I spent a good majority of my day yesterday looking through some ebook apps specifically for my nook, I'll post my findings.
First off, I'm going to talk about my top finds. Trust me, there are a lot out there and I didn't download them all, but I probably went through a good 15-20 apps. If you have an app that isn't listed that you like for whatever reason, post about it and I'll look into it! Make sure if you post an app below, that you give as much info as possible about it (and you've tried it on your nook)
App: Nook
Pros: Has a wide variety of books from major publishers, store sync's well with app, many options for viewing, allows you to import epub and pdf books.
Cons: Kinda basic, changing pages via the scroll bar doesn't work well, don't seem to be able to export books easily.
Bottom Line: Although it's a solid app, it doesn't have nearly as many books as the Kindle nor does it have as good a reading experience as other apps. With that said, it does offer some books that the Kindle store doesn't. I recommend this if you're loyal to B&N.
App: Kindle
Pros: Nice interface, huge store with major publishers (more than the Nook), good viewing options, allows import of epub and pdf books.
Cons: The app redirects to a webpage for the store, which doesn't work as flawlessly as other apps, Like the NOOK app, changing pages via the scroll bar doesn't work well. The mobi format isn't that common and doesn't add for easy exporting.
Bottom Line: The Kindle app offers more choice in books than any other app, but the reading experience still lacks somewhat. It has just as much options as the Nook, but being able to customize it more would have been nice. It is very similar to the Nook in terms of usage. If you are loyal to Amazon, it's great.
App: Overdrive
Pros: Free books rented from local library, also offers audiobooks.
Cons: Selection varies depending on your area, Library account needed, there is a wait on most books, the app itself sends you to a webpage.
Bottom Line: This is a good complimentary app IF they offer anything for you in your area. Out of the three area's I have tried, only one had support for it. Free is always nice!
App: Laputa (free version)
Pros: Free books from both major publishers and independent writers, many Public Domain books, support for Chinese books, allows for easy import/export (due to epub and pdf file types), Multiple sources from which to get books from, Virtual shelf interface.
Cons: Reading experience lacks, most books are bootleg (therefor illegal), small buttons make it almost impossible to touch, many links in the stores are broken, misspelled/missing text within downloaded books.
Bottom Line: If you don't mind getting books illegally, it has a lot of major series (Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Sword of Truth series, Holmes, and many more). Most (if not all) of the downloaded books are in epub format so importing them into another reader is easy. Right now (apparently with the last app update), book covers is broken, so to utilize that feature in any reader, you have to manually download and add them. Not many reading options don't help the reader at all. Good way to get free books, but not to read them.
App: Aldiko
Pros: Best reading experience, many many options (from font size to margins), multiple library views, categories, and tags, Store works OK with a lot of public domain and creative common books, along with paid books, importing books is really easy, as is setting up cover art (if the book doesn't already come with it), Support for Catalogs and easy "Last Read" button, also support for Adobe DRM (which I have not tried out)
Cons: The paid section of the store doesn't offer as many books as Nook or Kindle, but still has a good amount, plain Home interface and store.
Bottom Line: Although the store lacks compared to a big company such as Amazon or B&N, you can find many books with this app. There is no reading experience as good as this one, with options to change text, brightness, orientation settings, day/night colors, margins, and even advanced formatting to override the books initial formatting to suit your style. The library offers both "bookshelf" view and "list" views, which can be sorted to your desire independently. List view also offers tabs to view by Author, tags, and Collections (some books come preset with tags, others don't. Either way you can add your own, and your own tag types) By far the best way to view epub and pdf books, I just wish they had support for mobi and other formats so that I could import my kindle and nook books that I have.
Each of these offer different reasons to use them, but if you can find your ebook in epub or pdf format, Aldiko gives you the best reading experience by far. The fact that it makes it so easy to import, download, and use ebooks is refreshing compared to the Kindle and Nook. Although I do not fully understand Adobe DRM, because Aldiko supports it, it seems to only enhance it. On a final note, I downloaded the first book from Harry Potter from Laputa and imported it into Aldiko and read the first 4 chapters. The file was OK, with some spacing, spelling, and formatting errors that I KNOW and official release of the Harry Potter book would NOT have.
I will be updating this with further information and maybe other apps when I can. Let me know what you think and if you have different experiences than me (or I got something wrong)
PLEASE NOTE: I'd like to say that I do not condone getting ebooks illegally, however one of the apps I talk about above (Laputa) does allow you to do so (at the cost of spelling errors, formatting errors, etc.). I also believe (not 100% sure, but it makes sense) that the law on ebooks would be similar to the law on video game ROM's, that is if I won the book I can technically download a free version of the ebook if I can find it, such as the case with the Harry Potter book I mention.
I don't know about your legal interpretation of that. It's a different platform/format. If I buy a movie on DVD, I'm not entitled to download and burn a blu-ray copy of that same movie.
I prefer Nook from Android Market combined with Calibre ebook manager on the PC. You can pretty much feed Calibre any ebook format and it will not only convert it to which ever device you wish to read it on but it will load it onto the device in the directory that the device expects to find ebooks. (unless you tell it otherwise) Killer ebook combo.
Hi,
I have been using FBReader for my eBook reader and find it works very well. It
handles epub and a variety of other formats. (but not PDF). It has a good 'night
mode' and the ability to dim the backlight in the app.
There is a third party called FBSync in the market that will use the web to sync
book mark progress in books and/or the books to Dropbox. Particularly useful when
changing ROMs too often on the Nook Color!
I use Repligo for pdf reading, the reflow works reasonably well.
I know you are looking mainly at eBook readers, but you haven't mentioned Calibre
an opensource PC/MAC ebook library management program:
http://calibre-ebook.com/
Calibre will also download and manage covers, reviews and do format conversions.
Calibre works well with an Android app 'Calibre library' (paid) and FBReader.
I like your writeup and plan to try some of the other apps you suggested.
Thanks,
Peter
I'll put another vote here for FBReader.
I used Aldiko since I first got an Android phone in 2009. It was awesome, the absolute best reader software on Android. And then they lost their damn minds.
It is now 10 times bigger. And has one third of the options it used to have. I still haven't figured out what they did to accomplish that. When that happened I went looking for another option.
I had already given up on the Nook reader software because I keep a lot of books on my phone (and now on my Nook). The Nook reader software just couldn't handle it and basically self destructs when I try to load up my library. Laputa sucks in so many ways it isn't even worth mentioning.
I had tried FBReader way way back and it just wasn't good enough, but to my surprise when I tried it again all of the original issues were gone. It is easy to use, easy to configure to your liking, and can handle my 500+ book portable library with ease.
A. Nonymous said:
I don't know about your legal interpretation of that. It's a different platform/format. If I buy a movie on DVD, I'm not entitled to download and burn a blu-ray copy of that same movie.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Actually I just looked this up and you're right. I guess because I was thinking about digital rights and not literature rights, I thought that way. I'll update my post to reflect this.
Atahachi said:
I prefer Nook from Android Market combined with Calibre ebook manager on the PC. You can pretty much feed Calibre any ebook format and it will not only convert it to which ever device you wish to read it on but it will load it onto the device in the directory that the device expects to find ebooks. (unless you tell it otherwise) Killer ebook combo.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The nook app, IMO, lacks both features and usability. I'll have to check out Calibre, sounds like something i was looking for, thanks!
pmilford said:
Hi,
I have been using FBReader for my eBook reader and find it works very well. It
handles epub and a variety of other formats. (but not PDF). It has a good 'night
mode' and the ability to dim the backlight in the app.
I saw FBReader but decided not to download it after reading all the negative reviews of it. However, after seeing what you guys have said, I'll check it out and probably post my thoughts on here maybe tomorrow.
JMMusic said:
I'll put another vote here for FBReader.
I used Aldiko since I first got an Android phone in 2009. It was awesome, the absolute best reader software on Android. And then they lost their damn minds.
It is now 10 times bigger. And has one third of the options it used to have. I still haven't figured out what they did to accomplish that. When that happened I went looking for another option.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What more options could they have? It has more than any of the others I've seen.
JMMusic said:
Laputa sucks in so many ways it isn't even worth mentioning.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The only reason I mentioned it was because of it's store. Also, the app used to work pretty well when it first came out, but basically has not been updated since then.
Thanks guys for your input, I'll check out FBReader!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the write up.
I'd like to note that Aldiko's PDF viewer is quite limited (no zooming or panning whatsoever) unless the device is running Android 2.2 (Froyo) and up, which spoils it for me running the stock ROM (Eclair). Not finding any free alternatives, I purchased ezPDFreader, the least expensive option, and am quite happy with it so far.
For compiled HTML files (chm), iReader is a good option. It's very customizable and handles zooming and re-flow pretty well... and it's free
I'm on stock ROM and using Moon+ reader, lovin' it so far.
that moon reader seems pretty good. nice tip.
I also read (and documented somewhere) that you can set up Calibre in a server mode to serve up your own library of books. It seems that Aldiko will interact with it remotely in this manner. I read about it and intend to do it when I have a chance but haven't tried yet so that's about the extent of my knowledge on it
The three best reviewed Ereader Apps are Aldiko, Moon+ and FBReader.
FBReader was one of the original apps, from something like 15 years ago.
Of course, all of these are designed to read DRM-free books, so the "store" references in your review are not really relevant.
pmilford said:
Hi,
I have been using FBReader for my eBook reader and find it works very well. It
handles epub and a variety of other formats. (but not PDF). It has a good 'night
mode' and the ability to dim the backlight in the app.
There is a third party called FBSync in the market that will use the web to sync
book mark progress in books and/or the books to Dropbox. Particularly useful when
changing ROMs too often on the Nook Color!
I use Repligo for pdf reading, the reflow works reasonably well.
I know you are looking mainly at eBook readers, but you haven't mentioned Calibre
an opensource PC/MAC ebook library management program:
http://calibre-ebook.com/
Calibre will also download and manage covers, reviews and do format conversions.
Calibre works well with an Android app 'Calibre library' (paid) and FBReader.
I like your writeup and plan to try some of the other apps you suggested.
Thanks,
Peter
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Totally support. Been using the FBReader for ages now and with FBSync app there's absolutely no fuss now with different gadgets I read on.
Been using Aldiko here. Though it is a little big size wise, I like the feature set as well as visibility. Looks and performs really well, and allows you to import any other online catalogs you favor.
Combining that with Calibre, got a pretty nice pair.
Also, theres a portable test version of calibre incase you wanna throw it on a stick, or even your phone:
portableapps.com/node/20518
Cool Reader
Seems to work well on Rooted 1.1 - lots of options and very little bloat.
Another vote for Moon+ reader here! Been using it since day one and it's awesome.!
Sorry it's taking me so long to update my post guys, I'll be doing it soon, I promise! It's been a busy week on my end and I haven't had much nook time. Thanks for everyone who has replied!
Still waiting lol
Since this thread has popped up again, I would just put out there that Mantano has replaced both aldiko and any other PDF reader out there for me. The PDF reading experience is the most complete I've found to date, and with its new support for OPDS catalogs, should now be able to interact directly with calibre in server mode (although I haven't tested this yet... been too busy to read anything in the last month).
I've been using Kobo for epubs, it's pretty cool it gives you stats on your reading. It works great with the default dpi, unlike the nook app. Also, there's no need to move your files around in the sdcard since the app searches for all supported files in the card.
Another vote for Kobo! Lighter than Aldiko and with similar options.
My favorite reader app has suddenly disappeared from the play store. Does anyone know what happened to it? I just bought the pro version not too long ago and now it's completely gone (except the plugin for it, oddly enough).
For that matter...does anyone have any suggestion for the "next best thing"?
doncaruana said:
My favorite reader app has suddenly disappeared from the play store. Does anyone know what happened to it? I just bought the pro version not too long ago and now it's completely gone (except the plugin for it, oddly enough).
For that matter...does anyone have any suggestion for the "next best thing"?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Not sure why it's no longer on play store, looks like you can download from their website or other app stores http://moondownload.com/download.html
The author posted info on his website (and emailed me back for that matter) this status:
A nasty thing happened, Moon+ Reader and Moon+ Reader Pro have been removed from Google Play because a request email from a Russia company "litres.ru" to Google Play team, Google didn't make any investigation and confirmation, they just removed my reader from the Play directly.
The only reason from litres.ru is, after several steps, a user can download books from my reader, they own the copyright of some books. (the orginal text in Russian: Электронные книги популярных авторов. Например, книги Дарьи Донцовой. Также доступно приложение, в котором по умолчанию встроены пиратские сайты. Бесплатные книги доступны в два клика. )
My opinions:
1. the reader can access OPDS web sites just like that a web browser can access html web sites with standard protocol, if they think any book site has problem, they should contact the web server provider to stop the services, a web browser can't know if a web site is illegal.
2. if they think there is a url link in my reader that a user can access a book site which they think it has problem, they can contact me to remove the link, like remove dynamic links from a web browser, all the additional opds URLs in the reader are provided by our warm-heart users, the reader hasn't any book site servies by itself, it only works like a web browser.
-
The litres has its own reader app in Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ru.litres.android, it's an unfair play.
I still get no reply from Google, the last message I got from litres is "I will use my personal contacts in Google to speed up the recovery process, but now the speed of recovery process depends only on Google (unfortunately it's Friday now).", another very bad message is a comment from another user "Google will return your program to the market in about a month after recieving their letter. That's the procedure."
-
I'm a weak personal developer, I devote myself to this project for years; I and my family live on the revenue from the reader only, here I thank so many warm-heart users, you help me to improve the product, it gets 5,000,000-10,000,000 downloads in Google Play today, and has up to 40 locale languages support, I'm proud for you.
It'll be appreciated if anyone could help me, for anything related to this matter, accuse this type of thing, or contact google for someone who may be helpful to speed up the recovery of my application.
Regards
Seany
Cool Reader developer wrote here habrahabr.ru/post/168003/
"The reason - the ability to download books from pirate sites.
LitRes agree to withdraw the complaint, if the author embed "black list" directory OPDS, so that even the user can not manually add the pirate catalog.
Yesterday I received a letter from LitRes the same requirement as the author of the reading room Cool Reader. Otherwise, threaten to complain to Google, citing the example of Moon + Reader.
Who's next?"
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Now russian users reduce Litres's app's rating here play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ru.litres.android
and demand to withdraw the complaint.
I hope moonreader will be restored soon, and litres will burn in fire witheir app and 1 star rating
We (users of MR+) are supporting him as best as we can. I made the matter public here in Germany (at AndroidPIT.DE) first on Friday (immediately after it happened), and with more details as they became clear (see: Moon+ Reader kicked off the market -- dev needs help! and Litres abuses playstore regulations to get rid of competitors.
There are some things we can do, like e.g. making the issue public in as many places as accessible to us, in buying the app at his website (Paypal), in reporting the litres app to Google as abusing the playstore.
And yes, we should do these things. As the CoolReader author wrote: "Who's next?" Google should ASAP re-instate MR+ in the Playstore, and ban the Litres dev for abusing it. Otherwise it might become common practise to hit competitiors this way.
Jeez what a **** up. Google just removes them as a matter of policy, it is true. My guess is it is a self-protective measure in order to shield from any lawsuits but whatever.
It takes one DMCA complaint and an app is GONE, no investigation or corraboration needed. And I hate to say it, but it can take multiple months to return, and sometimes app publishers have to publish under a totally different account and signature before the whole thing is done.
This is a very easy way to put a single dev out of business permanently.
I succeeded in downloading and installing the APK file from their web site. However, when I try to load the Colordict dictionary file, it says my device "is not compatible". I'm rumming CM7 on a Nook Color and have installed the dictionary in Moon+ Reader many times. Is my problem related to this Play Store withdrawel issue. If so, is there a work around. There are lots of words I don't know