Is that wrong?

There are several pre-existing eBook readers for iPhone. Bookshelf (which has a great sync service with Baen Webscriptions and could support others, $5.99), and Stanza (my go-to most of the time, $Free) are the stand-outs.  They both have good interfaces with the important bits – text size, options for tap- or swipe- to-advance, bookmarks, library management, etc. Most importantly, they also offer landscape reading.

Kindle for iPhone has an unsurpassed syncing model with what I think is the largest eBook provider out there: Amazon. It’s slick, although, like Webscriptions, not integrated. You must purchase the books via Amazon’s Kindle Store from a web browser (mobile Safari reportedly works) but then the titles are automatically sync’d to your iPhone the next time you run the Kindle app. It also supports bookmarks (which reportedly sync to your physical Kindle device if you have one), text size, and other basic features. However, it does not have a landscape mode! (At least not one I could find)

Granted, a portrait reading mode is more “book-like” in that it mimics the orientation of most printed pages, but at sensible text sizes, you get 5-8 words across the screen. That’s, maybe, half a sentence for the most part and often less. So here’s why that’s a problem – for me at least, and others I’m sure. To read a book on Kindle for iPhone, your eyes flick back-and-forth, back-and-forth, a LOT. (About 18 times/page)  Then, as with anything featuring a relatively small screen, your eyes flick up to the top of the page every time you advance. In a landscape mode, you still have the same number of page turns since you have roughly the same number of words on the page, but you have the back-and-forth eye movement only 10 or 11 times per page, and only half the distance to flick back up to the top of the page on advances. Really, it makes a difference to me (40% less eye flick!) and I found my eyes becoming fatigued much faster in portrait mode – just like I did when I was originally trying Stanza and Bookshelf and the reason I very quickly moved to landscape mode exclusively.

This, for me, is a fatal flaw in an otherwise great app. (Though they also need tap-to-advance instead of the silly swipe-only they have now.) Now, I would like to think that they did some usability testing around this app, and maybe they have good reasons for not offering landscape mode, but until they do, I’ll be sticking with Stanza and Bookshelf and not buying any Kindle content.