To my credit, I bought an Orson Scott Card novel yesterday through Stanza/Fictionwise and have started reading it, and I think it might start growing on me. But I still love Eucalyptus the most. :)

Huh, that is ironic. You don’t like to pay for ebooks but you’ll pay for the reader, and I don’t mind paying for ebooks, but I don’t like paying for the reader. I think you win the frugality battle on this point.

Anyway, I think I might happen to have a DRM-free copy of LOTR, the Hobbit, and the Silmarillion laying around my computer somewhere. If I remember right, the formatting was a bit funky, but if you like I can lend it to you, as I won’t be using it any time soon (I know it is electronic, but if you can lend out books, why not ebooks?). Let me know if you are interested and I’ll email it to you.

I would love to read Orson Scott Card, Neil Gaiman, etc. on Eucalyptus, no doubt about that. So far, though, I have a hard time getting myself to buy ebooks. (Ironic, considering your second point. :)) If I’m going to buy a book, I want the physical book (and I buy around 20 books a month, so I obviously have no qualms with paying for books). I don’t know. I guess I should try buying some books through Fictionwise/Stanza and see how it goes. (I did buy Lord of the Rings but it turned out that Stanza can’t read it because of the stupid DRM. Sigh.)

I hope Amazon does juice up the aesthetics of Stanza. Any word on when an update might come out? I haven’t heard anything.

Personally, I have two issues with Eucalyptus. The first, lack of non-Gutenberg titles, you already stated is a non-factor for you. For me, however, there are too many books and authors not on Gutenberg that I’d have to do without: Neil Gaiman, Orson Scott Card, any modern psychology book, and this fantastic zombie-vampire book called “The Strain” by Guillermo del Toro (director of Pan’s Labyrinth). Gutenberg is great for classics and Cory Doctorow, but insufficient for my needs.

Second, the price tag. I know, $10 once isn’t that big of a deal. But when I can get something close for free, I have a really hard time justifying the expense. Call me a cheapskate.

One thing I’ll give you is Eucalyptus beats Stanza mercilessly when it comes to aesthetics. The font, the background, the ridiculously cute pie charts…you can’t reproduce the experience in Stanza. I managed to port the font (thanks to your help) and the background into Stanza, so my reading experience is pretty close (I actually prefer tapping to swiping), but hopefully Amazon is paying attention and will give the interface a makeover in a forthcoming update. Regardless, in my book Stanza retains the iPhone throne.

Curious. I have Stanza. I really dislike it’s clunky menu system and payment system. Where did you find Project G. books on it? Every book I ever wanted that’s in the PD costs something on Stanza (same with Kindle).

Douglas Cootey
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✍ The Splintered Mind