iPhone Books

NEW!

I worked with Michael Zapp of ZappTek to develop the Legends reader for the iPhone/iPod Touch. We decided on a design that combines utility with good typographical style. (Having worked for years in the gaming industry and spending part of it doing typesetting, I actually have experience in this area.) The result is a killer App that provides you with a great reading experience.

Once we had that accomplished, we started looking for authors and work to bring into the program. The list is always expanding, and you can check ZappTek to find out what the latest additions are. You’ll discover a great selection of hard-to-find and long out-of-print books, as well as brand new offerings by promising newcomers. Even better, you’ll find side stories from novels and continuing serials—types of offerings that only make sense in the digital age for a digital platform like Legends.

Why Buy Legends books instead of from Amazon for their Kindle App?

There are two main reasons for this. The first is that the Legends program offers material that is not available from Amazon for the Kindle. The second is the reason much of it isn’t available from Amazon: the Amazon business model as currently written sucks for the author. In return for hosting the files and distributing them, Amazon takes a 65% cut of cover price. Conversely, Apple only takes 30%. Through the Legends program, the author who created the story you’re enjoying gets 50% of the money you pay. We also get it within 30 days of your purchasing the item, whereas Amazon hangs on to the money for a full 60 days after the end of the month in which the purchase was made.

The price of the stories will be the same to you, but there’s a big difference when it comes to how much the author makes. The difference between .70 and $1 may not seem like much, but over a hundred sales it does make a difference. This is especially true when the author is working for himself, paying his own health insurance and hasn’t yet beaten that nasty addiction to food!

For years I’ve read books on a variety of handheld devices. I had two different models of Apple’s Newton, and formatted books for them. I’ve read off my Palm PDA. At DragonCon, two years ago, I discovered I had a reading, so I put the story on my Tungsten and read off that. I even reformatted Don Quixote so I could read one of the world’s oldest novels on the newest technology. It’s all great fun, and the iPhone/iPod Touch is a fantastic way to carry a library of your favorites right in your pocket.

__________________________

The links below will take you to pages in Apple’s Appstore where you can purchase these stories and download them onto your phone or Touch.