The average size of smartphones has leveled at around 5 inches for some time now. Well that is according research by this guy at least. Furthermore, according to some tree huggers, approximately 80,000 to 160,000 trees are cut down daily worldwide many of which end up as paperbacks. While only ardent book readers understand that heavenly smell of books, the times are changing fast. Should we cut down forests just to inhale the books literally and figuratively? One would wonder, why should we write fantastical books about forested lands when in actuality we are cutting down the real thing? Whoever came up with ebooks and ebook readers -God bless their soul- did humanity a justice. Ebooks come in many formats, the most popular of which are epub and mobi but you can find many more.
Reading books on smartphones needs some getting used to at first. But once you get the hang of it, you will appreciate the convenience of one device with hundreds of your favorite volumes. At times you will be hardpressed to find bestsellers in your vicinity. Or the price of the hardcover will be more than you can afford. Ebooks have the advantage of being relatively cheaper in ebook stores like Amazon.
Aldiko Book Reader
- Aldiko Book Reader Free is ad supported. Aldiko Premium gets rid of ads
- Support EPUB, PDF formats as well as Adobe DRM encrypted eBooks.
- Fully-customisable: Font size, font type, backgrounds, night reading mode
- In-app book catalogue hosting hundreds of bestsellers for purchase. A number of books are free
- Add ebooks from local storage
Moon+ Reader
- Moon+Reader Free is ad supported. Pro version gets rid of ads.
- Supports txt, html, epub, pdf, mobi, umd, fb2, chm, cbr, cbz, rar, zip or OPDS formats
- In-app book catalogue with hundreds of books free to read or for purchase
- Dozens of customisations: Themes, day-night mode toggle, text font and size, scrolling effects and animations
- Backup and Restore books with Dropbox, Google Drive and from Local storage. Sync modifications between smartphones and tablets
- Dictionary support for highlighted text
- Reading statistics e.g reading time and speed for each book
- Available in dozens of languages
FBReader
- FBReader is a free (and ad-free) multi-platform ebook reader.
- Provides access to popular network libraries that contain a large set of ebooks. Download books for free or for a fee. Add your own catalog.
- Supports popular ebook formats: ePub, fb2, mobi, rtf, html, plain text, and a lot of other formats
- Highly customizable. Choose colors, fonts, page turning animations, dictionaries, bookmarks, etc. to make reading as convenient as you want.
- Store books in your Google Drive.
- Organise books by authors, by series, etc.
- Synchronise book collection, reading positions, and bookmarks across devices.
- Add book from desktop computer to all your devices. Manage your library online.
Universal Book Reader
- Ad supported for free version. Pro version offers more customisations
- Supports and can convert over 50 different file formats to PDF or ePub including mobi, txt, csv, xlsx, docx, odt, pub, wps, psd and many more.
- Feedbooks online store fully integrated with Universal Book Reader
- Intuitive and animated navigation
- Customisable: Font style and size, orientation, day/night mode
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Available in 12 languages – Brazilian Portuguese, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Spanish and Swedish
eReader Prestigio
- Customisable themes, fonts, day/night mode, scrolling styles
- Sync books with Google Drive, One Drive, Dropbox and Prestigio CloudMultiple file support: Text, epub, djvu, html, fb2, fb2.zip, txt, pdf, mobi, epub3, audiobooks stories and video files in books.
- Search for definitions of words with inbuilt dictionary: Color Dict
- Text-To-Speech function in multiple languages: English, Russian, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Dutch, Portuguese, Greek, Finnish, Czech, Polish, Croatian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Hungarian, Romanian, Slovak, Slovenian, Bulgarian, Belorussian, Serbian, Ukrainian and Kazakh
- Buy and download free books and texts from In-App eReader book store with over 50,000 volumes
Calibre ebook Reader for PC/Mac/Linux
Perhaps more feature-rich than all the smartphone ebook readers above is Calibre Ebook manager. Calibre is an unparalleled comprehensive Open-source ebook management software that handles everything to do with your ebooks. Calibre works on PC, Mac and Linux computers. We don’t go into much detail, but here’s a list of what Calibre can do:
- Library Management for your ebooks on local storage
- E-book conversion from/to msost popular formats.
- Syncing local library to e-book reader devices
- Downloading news from the web and converting it into e-book form
- Comprehensive e-book viewer
- Content server for online access to your book collection
- E-book editor for the major e-book formats
Featured Image: WikiHow