Ability to view eBook cover art

[jmann]

I've spent a fair share of time finding hi-res covers for all of my eBooks. I'm disappointed I can only view the small version of the artwork before it swoops by upon being opened. No option to admire the cover, only the first page.

Anyone else feel the same, and hope its changed in the future?

 

[Piggie]

I've spent a fair share of time finding hi-res covers for all of my eBooks. I'm disappointed I can only view the small version of the artwork before it swoops by upon being opened. No option to admire the cover, only the first page.

Anyone else feel the same, and hope its changed in the future?

Funny you should bring this up.

I'd never seen an eBook before having an iPad, and after hearing the Graphical Luxury that was the iPad's way of displaying books, I must say I was less than impressed by the eBook experience.

My image of an ebook, was someone on screen like a book, the front cover, the back cover and the contents all laid out like the real book.

The bookshelf looks nice graphically, but after clicking on a book it looks more of less like wading through a plain text file.

Not a "virtual book experience"

I agree that a bit more work should be done, to make it feel as much like the real thing as possible.

 

[poloponies]

Not a "virtual book experience"

As a longtime Kindle user, it's far more a virtual book experience than anything out there. I have several nonfiction books that I purchased on my Kindle that contained photos, charts and diagrams which didn't work all that well on the Kindle. They're awesome on the iPad. As is the indexing. I'd say the ability to jump to a page, chapter or photograph is more than a fair trade-off for viewing a low-res cover.

 

[Piggie]

As a longtime Kindle user, it's far more a virtual book experience than anything out there. I have several nonfiction books that I purchased on my Kindle that contained photos, charts and diagrams which didn't work all that well on the Kindle. They're awesome on the iPad. As is the indexing. I'd say the ability to jump to a page, chapter or photograph is more than a fair trade-off for viewing a low-res cover.

I'm not disagreeing that it's not the best out there.

I just think (as someone not used to eBooks)

The best is not yet good enough.

I wish to see a proper hi-res front and rear cover image
I also want to see embedded fonts.

There is something special about a real book when different books use different typefaces, it makes it feel special and new when it physically looks different to some other book.

I understand they make eBooks as small as they could, data wise, but with the cost of memory these days being so small, I think they stripped eBooks down that bit too much.

As I say, give up proper front and back cover art, to set the scene, and also the ability to view in the typeface the publisher chose for the book.

 

[JBazz]

I guess I dont understand the problem? I just checked my books and they have a front cover. You can see it by selecting it in the menu.

 

[Night Spring]

I guess I dont understand the problem? I just checked my books and they have a front cover. You can see it by selecting it in the menu.

Exactly. By default, the books open to the first page in the first chapter, but you can see the front cover by jumping there from the menu, or flipping back to it, or by sliding the page slider all the way to the beginning.

I haven't seen any books with the back cover included, though.

 

[Don Kosak]

Yup, flipping to page one in portrait or landscape in iBooks shows you the cover full screen on the books I own.

If you're in landscape mode (side-by-side pages) and tap the "Table of Contents" icon iBooks displays the cover on the left, and table of contents on the right. (Tap "Resume" to go back to reading where you left off.)

I do hope the competition from the various e-book companies out there forces rapid improvements. Amazon has been setting the pace solo for some time now.

 

[MaxBurn]

Stanza allows you to look at the cover as long as you want, not sure if there is an iPad version though.