Shortcovers Main Page
Shortcovers, the alleged Kindle killer, went live this morning. So what is shorcovers? It is a e-book service built around mobile devices. The idea is to read books on your iPhone, your Blackberry or whichever smart phone you might use. Unlike other great e-book software, like Stanza, shortcovers is paired with a commercial bookstore backed by the publishing industry. In other words, shortcovers offers books you might actually want to read.
shortcovers.com – Find your next great read: Discover thousands of books, chapters, news and magazine articles, short stories, blog posts and more, anywhere, anytime online and on your mobile device.
Great Reads at Your Fingertips: Shortcovers.com works like you think. It’s intuitive. To find your next great read, simply search by author, title or keyword. Or you can browse for content by topic, author or popularity. Once you’ve found something great to read, simply bookmark it—we’ll add it to your Library and create an I’m Reading List just for you.
Shortcovers Portrait Mode
Take Your Reads with You: Whether you’re online or on your mobile, you’ll always have access to your shortcovers.com Reading list and Library. With your I’m Reading list, we keep track of your most recent reads. Plus, when you bookmark pages as you read, we’ll remember exactly where you left off—best of all, changes, updates, additions and purchases are seamless from web to mobile and back again.
You Decide, Then Subscribe
Without a doubt, it is slick program. It is nicely laid out and has lots of bells and whistles. The catalog has a ton of books and each has a free sample chapter.
shortcovers landscape catolog
But how easy is it to read with shortcovers? Is it accessible? Though not as accessible as Stanza, with its adjustable font and color schemes, shortcovers offers some key features to make their books easier to read:
Shortcovers Font Settings
Changing Fonts & Accessing Tips: You can change fonts and adjust the font size of the application by selecting the Gear icon in the footer menu. You can also see a screen of tips by selecting the Helpful Tips button.
I used the font setting screen to choose the largest font size and select the boldest font. I still need to use my low vision glasses to read the text, but is not going to cause too much eyestrain. The largest font size could be larger and the font selection could be broader, but it is a lot better than most other iPhone apps.
shortcovers Reading in Landscape Mode
Where shortcovers comes up short, so to speak, is the lack of an alternate color scheme. Holding my iPod Touch that close to my eyes with a bright white screen is going to get old fast. Stanza offers alternate color schemes that would tremendously reduce eye strain.
I would also love to know when they will add their own text-to-speech feature. Then it would not only become a true Kindle competitor, but become a killer accessibility app.
Read more iPhone accessibility reviews.
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