All iPads Do you read on your iPad?

[AlliFlowers]

Publishers provide services such as editing and marketing. Oh, and cover design. There's also prestige in being picked to publish by a known publishing house. So I don't think publishers will go away completely, but yeah, it's easier and cheaper than ever for authors to self publish.

Some of that prestige is going to go away in our digital future. They won't need to take as large a percentage from the author's if there are no physical requirements for publishing.

 

[Night Spring]

Some of that prestige is going to go away in our digital future. They won't need to take as large a percentage from the author's if there are no physical requirements for publishing.

If everyone self-publishes, no one stands out. Makes it hard for consumers to weed out the wheat from the chaff. Some kind of selection/narrowing mechanism is needed. Independent authors on their own are going to have a hard time convincing readers to pay to read their stuff.

 

[AlliFlowers]

They can still hire a publicist. Much cheaper.

 

[Isamilis]

I used to read books and magazines on iPad 9.7" few years ago, until I tried Kindle. Now, I read most on Kindle and sometime on iPad for text book or magazine only.

I use an iPad mini for reading and web browsing. I read and web browse on an iPhone, but web browsing is more enjoyable on the iPad. I also use the iPad mini to test an app I'm developing which can simulate an iPhone screen as well as behave like a regular iPad. I use Pages for basic document creation. But I do find that working on the iPad decreases productivity so anything substantial I'm working on, I often need to return to an iMac.

I use the iPad mini usually on the couch or on a table, at the library or on the go. One reason I chose the mini was due to it's very neat compact size and much lighter weight than the larger iPads. Plus, the mini doesn't have a protruding camera. (I think the camera sticking out on the new iPad Pro is such a poor design decision, but that's just an opinion.)

I suspect the Kindle with e-ink has much better display quality for reading in super bright light such as under the sun at the beach. The iPad won't be as great in super bright beach light. But I guess this all depends on if your iPad likes to stay seaside under the sun often.

I was attracted to the mini because although the colour gamut technically wasn't apparently as good as an iPad (which I haven't really been able to notice), the image quality was incredibly sharp, even more sharper than iPad when comparing them side by side. (This would likely be due to the higher pixels per inch (ppi) with 326 ppi on the iPad mini just like on iPhone vs a lower 264 ppi on iPad Air and Pro.)

For ebooks, and other resources in the typical ebook format, mini is great, and I can adjust the text size when reading in the iBooks app. Sometimes when reading A4 sized PDF's though, due to the text size being fixed in a PDF, text can be rather small to read on the mini. However that's easily fixed by a double tap on the block of text to zoom in and focus in on that piece of text, or rotating the device landscape to fill the width also works a treat. Sometimes when reading PDFs, and depending on the set up of the PDF document, I get slightly strange colours due to the way the document was created either in an RGB or CMYK colour space (e.g. dark blue displays as lighter cyan blue). It's not an issue for most things, just some PDFs.

One small gripe is when web browsing with Safari, it can crash from time to time, and sometimes it needs to reload tabs. (It's something Apple needs to look at improving for future devices to completely eliminate the issue.)

When approaching the purchasing decision, I usually go with the lowest capacity - 16GB. (Side note: actually Apple should build in the highest capacity these days considering storage costs Apple very little.) I simply back up the device and at the same time free up storage during that process, but storage rarely gets out of hand like that. I chose the Wifi model which is fine for almost all places. And, in the event there is no wifi, I turn on the iPhone's Wifi Hot Spot in settings and use the internet through the wireless iPhone connection. Simple and useful. I purchased the iPad mini when a special discount sale was on at a local retailer.

A lot longer than I originally planned, hope it helps!

 

[dk001]

Yes, both Apple and Kindle are now starting to charge high prices for eBooks. They seem to be done with buying market share with low prices and ebooks are now priced the same or even higher than paperbacks, their only advantage being earlier availability.

Since I really enjoy the paperback reading experience, I've found that lately I'm buying more paperbacks and far less eBooks - except for the classics that are still free.

A serious number of books on Amazon are price set by the publisher - it tells you in the small print near the price.
Check out Kindle Daily Deals - I can often get 1st rate books for $2.99US or less. Apple Books I stay away from. I read on one of several devices and only a couple are Apple.

 

[M. Gustave]

Publishers provide services such as editing...

Sadly, with ebooks that really isn't the case. They simply OCR them, and then send off the file for sale. Even major publishing houses sell classics with typos, words mushed together, missing punctuation, etc.

This is one reason I've never warmed to ebook reading.

 

[Night Spring]

Sadly, with ebooks that really isn't the case. They simply OCR them, and then send off the file for sale. Even major publishing houses sell classics with typos, words mushed together, missing punctuation, etc.

This is one reason I've never warmed to ebook reading.

I was thinking about editing new books, but yeah, the shoddy way they convert existing books to digital format is horrible. That's one reason I wish someone would come out with an ePub editing app for the iPad, so I can fix typos as I read.
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They can still hire a publicist. Much cheaper.

And how is this cheap publicist making a living? Representing many independent authors of varying quality? You've got to think about the entire ecosystem.

I'm not saying the number of independent authors and publicists wouldn't increase in coming years, but the old system of publishing houses isn't going away overnight.

 

[bubulol]

What's the best size for reading manga/pdf?

 

[Night Spring]

What's the best size for reading manga/pdf?

12.9! Manga in the original A4 page size, like they were intended.

 

[bubulol]

Most of manga i ve owned its in pocket size book lol

 

[Night Spring]

Most of manga i ve owned its in pocket size book lol

Pocket size is how they are compiled, but originally they are drawn for A4 page monthly or weekly magazines.

 

[rui no onna]

Pocket size is how they are compiled, but originally they are drawn for A4 page monthly or weekly magazines.

Lol, I do have a few Jump and Sho-Comi phonebooks. Crappy paper quality.

I find ~7-8" (Nexus 7, iPad mini, etc) in portrait quite comfortable enough for reading manga. However, I prefer reading in landscape mode (double-page spread) so the 9.7" at 4:3 aspect ratio is more my speed. The 9.7" iPads are too small for reading American comics in landscape though so I'll probably buy an iPad Pro 12.9" one of these days.

If you're fine with the added bulk and weight, the 12.9" iPad Pro is likely best for comics and PDF

 

[Night Spring]

Lol, I do have a few Jump and Sho-Comi phonebooks. Crappy paper quality.

I find ~7-8" (Nexus 7, iPad mini, etc) in portrait quite comfortable enough for reading manga. However, I prefer reading in landscape mode (double-page spread) so the 9.7" at 4:3 aspect ratio is more my speed. The 9.7" iPads are too small for reading American comics in landscape though so I'll probably buy an iPad Pro 12.9" one of these days.

If you're fine with the added bulk and weight, the 12.9" iPad Pro is likely best for comics and PDF

Used to stop by the bookstore every day after school to "tachiyomi" the latest weeklys -- each one was released on a particular day of a week.

I agree that manga is quite readable on the iPad mini in portrait, but landscape double page mode is better on the 9.7 and best on 12.9. But I bought the 12.9 so I could do work -- mostly typing documents using Pages and Word. It's just a coincidence that manga looks good on it!

 

[bubulol]

How manga look on portrait mode on Mini in comparison of 9'7?
I used to read it on Android 8'' tablet in 16/10, in portrait mode, it does look fine
I d prefer to read anything on portrait mode, do you?

 

[Osty]

Maybe there's no longer a need for the publisher. Maybe it's time for authors to reap 100% of the profit.

Publishers provide services such as editing and marketing. Oh, and cover design. There's also prestige in being picked to publish by a known publishing house. So I don't think publishers will go away completely, but yeah, it's easier and cheaper than ever for authors to self publish.

A nice idea, but @Night Spring is right. That said with many publishers now owned big media conglomerates they are increasing interested only in big selling, established or celebrity writers. They aren't very good at catering to niche interests or breaking out new talent. In fact a lot of publishers and agent actually comb Amazon looking for successful indies authors and try to entice them into the fold.
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Some of that prestige is going to go away in our digital future. They won't need to take as large a percentage from the author's if there are no physical requirements for publishing.

That's certainly true. There used to be a stigma about self publishing but that's largely vanished. There's no difference between indie authors to indie musicians or podcast creators these days. Sellers likes Amazon, Apple and Kobo have ostensibly given indies the same retail space as publishers, something that was virtually impossible in a bricks and mortal retail.

Technology has throughly disrupted the way content is created and delivered to the consumer.

 

[sorcery]

I read extensively on the Air 2, with smart cover, but only in the shade, where I am not troubled by reflections or thermal shutdowns.
(Kindle PW for pulp fiction on the beach or by the pool).
As I am not in the habit of upgrading the operating system, my kindle app once vanished from my iPad 4. This so impressed me that I converted my library to epub, via calibre, and switched to the Marvin app. Thoroughly recommended.

 

[AVBeatMan]

Has anyone completely ditched their kindle for their iPad mini for reading?

 

[Ffosse]

I used to read on a Sony e-reader but the iPad Mini 4 is simply superior.

I can split the screen and look up Wikipedia whenever I want to find out about something, take notes and have them automatically saved to Google Drive - lots of functionality that e-readers just don't have and never will.

 

[Talkingtoaster]

Yes as part of my IT degree but apart from that no. Not really a big reader, prefer videos and gaming. If I do have to read a book I'd always seek out the .epub file first before buying it in physical form.

 

[glenthompson]

Where do you buy DRM-free eBooks?

O'Reilly sells all their books DRM free. Mainly tech books. Most other books I download from my local libraries. Not DRM free but free to read.

 

[kjm18]

Use iBooks on my iPad Pro 9.7 so yes