Okay, regular readers of this blog (hello, all three of you, and Merry Christmas) will know that I am a great big Stanza-whore for my ebook reading. This has been because, simply put, Stanza is easy, convenient, and flexible…and available to Australians.

When Kindle showed up in Australia, the very first thing I did was look for the Kindle for iPhone app on iTunes, yet another little nifty ebook reader not then available in my geographic region; I assumed that if the Kindle was available to Australia, so would the app be. It wasn’t. Perhaps that was because of software fixes that needed to be ironed out, or perhaps it was because Amazon wanted a few Kindle sales first before making the app freely available…either way, it wasn’t available then but it is available now.

So how does Kindle app compare to Stanza app?

Well, I find reading on it just as easy as Stanza, especially with same trick I use with Stanza (you don’t have to go click over there, the trick is easy: turn your screen to its landscape orientation [which Kindle does anyway] and alter your font to make it easy on the eye). Finding books is fine even though it goes off and opens Safari instead of accessing the bookstore within the Kindle app; the back-and-forth integration is good enough to not be annoying.

I am loving certain aspects of Kindle app. Like all big corporations, Amazon has its reputation for evil and it’s done a few #Amazonfail things in recent history, but there’s one thing it does damn well and that’s allow its customers to do things like browse and find other books (or whatever product) that they would like based on their previous purchases and what other customers bought, and to read lots of reviews (some well-done, some not so much) and to read sample chapters before purchase.

And so the thing the Kindle app does that kicks Stanza’s arse is to allow me to look up a title that has somehow ended up on my reading list (I always forget to note why I put a book on my list and where the recommendation came from, which, yes, is silly of me, but does mean I can’t trust the list: it’s for noting books I thought sounded interesting, not telling me which ones I should actually read), download a sample to my iPod Touch, and read it at my leisure – and then buy it easily if applicable…

…because the other thing the Kindle app does well is to filter out books not available to Australians (with one or two glitches). It irks me when I get interested in a book and then am not allowed to buy it; it irks me less when I don’t know about it.

It’s not Stanza’s fault that it can’t do these things. For purchasing new titles (as opposed to free books and classics), it gives access to Fictionwise and Books on Board, and neither of these ebook retailers are designed for browsing. They make the big titles available in various ebook formats (I’m not interested in the Dan Browns and the Robert Jordans, and whenever I search for the titles I am interested in, they don’t have them). You go there, search for the book you want, and buy it (if you aren’t Australian, of course). You already know you want it, so you don’t need to read a few sample chapters to assess your purchase (to be fair, Fictionwise at least gives you a page or so as a sample, but not downloadable and not via Stanza). They are not designed for browsing or for discovering new authors. The one site via Stanza that does allow you to browse and discover new authors, is, of course, Smashwords.

The Fictionwise/BoB no-browse set-up is very much like my local physical bookstore here in KLCC, which has shrinkwrapped most of its books so you can’t open them to read the first few pages. This basically means that unless I want to take a punt based entirely on the title and back cover (and I do do this, and sometimes it works out well but most of the time, it is a big, big mistake), I need to note the titles I have found interesting while browsing, go home and visit Amazon to do my research, and then return to the bookstore if it turns out I want the book…or, as I am sure you can imagine, just buy the book on Amazon since I’m there and the price is about the same and delivery’s fast.

And so you can see that, if it wasn’t for one little thing, I would just convert straight over to Kindle and save my Stanza for reading my Ruritanian romances (do you know what happens in the sequel? What a bastard that Hope fellow was). And I would be sorry about that, because Stanza does what it does very well, but I would do it because Fictionwise and BoB are impossible to browse.

The one little thing is that proprietary Kindle format. Yes, Kindle books make up most of the market right now, but that doesn’t mean they always will, as other ebook readers gain traction. And to have a format that can only be read by one supplier’s device…well, it’d be like having a bunch of Microsoft .lit format books, now wouldn’t it? Okay, so ePub is also liable to be unreadable in a decade’s time, but at least it can be read by many different devices so it is less likely to become obsolete, maybe. [If you are reading this in 2020, you are welcome to now laugh hollowly; you may also laugh hollowly right now if DRM is preventing you from reading the supposed universal ePub on the device of your choice.]

On the other hand, if I absolutely fall in love with a book, I’m likely to buy it in physical form anyway, so how durable does the electronic version need to be? And is it really worth doing all my research in the Kindle app and then popping over to the Stanza app to make an ePub purchase – when half the time a book is not even available on Fictionwise or BoB even when available in Kindle? As with my physical bookstore, once a retailer has forced me to go to Amazon for the research, I’m far more likely to just stay on Amazon for the purchase.

Until now, my ebook reading has been mostly limited to classics and to the new authors I’ve browsed on Smashwords, because of the blockers put in my way by Fictionwise and BoB (and geographical restrictions). Kindle has made it possible to not only find new reads through browsing, but also to evaluate the books I’ve put on my reading list, making it far more likely that I’ll buy. Until the ePub ebookstores wake up and provide better service – including B&N making the B&N Reader app suitable for Australians – Kindle app beats Stanza app. Sorry Stanza, we can still be friends.