iPhone the most popular ebook reader

I have an iPhone 3G and a Kindle. Both are equally as important, but I couldn't imagine reading a whole book on my iPhone.

You're kidding me? I read the Da Vinci Code on a 1st gen iPod. Beat that.

I just read 1984 on the iPhone 3G using Bookshelf with 18 pt Georgia typeface in black on a cream background. Very readable. I'm starting on a GK Chesterton book now.

Forbes's comparison may be imperfect, but it's highly plausible.

I haven't tried Stanza. BookShelf was kinda pricey but was perhaps the first reader available in the AppStore and was derived from Books, which I used for months in an Installer.app version.

I've read dozens of full length books on it. Quite a few from Gutenberg, such as War of the Worlds and Verne and other classics, and also more recent things obtained from bittorrent. For example I found a torrent of all the Hugo award winners ever. I'm currently up to 1969 and so have read the entire Foundation trilogy, Stranger in a Strange Land, Dune, Fahrenheit 451 and a lot more. Interestingly, though I'd read many before, often in the 70's or 80's, I'm finding the ebook versions often contain more material. Stranger in a Strange Land especially was about 30% longer than what I read in 1978 and made a lot more sense!

As others have said, it's amazing how much you can read when you can just pull the iPhone out any time you have a couple of dead minutes. This happens a lot more times a day than you might think! At the same time, even my 45 year old eyes find it extremely comfortable to read from the iPhone screen for hours at a time -- and the phone is a lot lighter than a paperback book.

Book reading is my most-used iPhone function by far.

I've used my iPhone to read multi-hundred page PDFs. Apps like Briefcase and Datacase are great for carrying these around.

You've got to be kidding me... nobody has pointed out that they're comparing a $300 piece of electronics with a free download? The number of free downloads compared to the number of $300 purchases is so irrelevant that "apples to oranges" is too good of a comparison as we're still talking about edible fruit. Kumkwats to ductape is more like it. I downloaded Stanza and deleted it 5 minutes later (didn't like it nor find it useful). The number of FREE DOWNLOADS compared to the number of $300 hardware purchases is supposed to mean something? Please. Let alone "Number one"? Surely people are smarter than that and they mean this to be tongue in cheek.

I use Bookshelf myself, daily, for both news and books. Would I like a larger screen? Sure, but it works well as it is for text and it's important that, unlike the Kindle, Sony eReader, or Cybook, that it fits in my pocket and I always have it with me.

I agree with the comments about the great experience reading books on the iPhone. I've been using BookZ to read books in .txt format and right now as far as convenience goes, I prefer it to a real book. You don't have to use a tiny font to get enough content on the screen to make it worthwhile, and you can hold the thing with one hand and turn pages by tapping with your thumb. The type is crystal clear and easy to read. The main disadvantage with .txt formatted books is the lack of italics and (often) the use of characters in extended character sets that don't show up properly. I'm looking for a good .pdf reader now; looks like Stanza or maybe Readdle.

I have Stanza. I don't like it because documents that have white space intentionally placed get truncated to a single blank line. It is as if it treats everything like html.

BookShelf is a far superior reading experience. I've been reading on the small screen since the Palm IIIe and have no problem with screen size. I'm near sighted and can see very clearly with the device held 7 inches from the tip of my nose (just measured). That makes the text appear larger than a book held at a comfortable distance. (Just like with video which appears larger than a large screen from a comfortable distance.)

The size issue is simple geometry, a triangle from nose to device.

The Kindle is really nice, but try reading it in the dark at night while your spouse is sleeping. The Kindle is nice, but try putting it in your pocket while you are out and about. My wife has a Kindle, I have an iPod Touch. While she is trying to figure out whether the yogurt at the store might have melamine in it, I'm reading on my Touch -- never happen with a Kindle.

I use both Stanza and Bookshelf, though I tend to use Bookshelf more, because I love the server feature. I have my media server now loaded with a couple hundred books. I have read at least 30-40 books (full length) on the iPhone using these two apps, and just recently finished reading "The Hobbit" to my daughter using Stanza.

Backlighting, adjustable size, automatic scrolling, high quality screen and the ability to carry dozens of books in your pocket really put the iPhone up there as an impressive eBook reader.