Back in 2009, when the Kindle was only a year and a half old, Amazon bought Stanza. At the time, Stanza was probably the most popular (speculation) and certainly the most usable (opinion) ereader app for iOS devices, like the iPhone. I speculate and post these opinions because at the time I was reading almost exclusively with this app on my iPhone and was amazed at how do-able it was to read on my phone and had done lots of research on picking the app. There were lots of other people using this app and it is no surprise that Amazon thought it a good idea to acquire this company.
Fast forward to October of 2011 and Amazon has finally let the Stanza app die. What does this mean? As of iOS5, Stanza no longer functions as a stable application due to the lack of updates from Amazon. With no announcements from Amazon about updating this app for iOS5, and quite frankly no incentive with its own Kindle app now purring along happily on iOS, I feel safe saying this app is essentially dead.
It is a shame that the Stanza app has died because there was a huge following of users who appreciated it for a number of stand-out features that none of the other ereader apps feature. For me personally, the most appreciated core feature was the ease of adding books without wires or syncing from the vast catalog of Project Gutenberg, as well as accessing other pre-loaded stores and the ability to add other custom sources for books. In addition to this core feature set, Stanza also had the ability to sync to your own collection of dozens, hundreds or even thousands of books easily through a relationship with Calibre, an ebook management software for your computer. Finally there was the vast and very flexible set of features that allowed a user to tailor the reading experience to their exact preferences, including fonts, sizes, margin sizes, between line AND between section/paragraph spacing, black on white or white on black schemes, the ability to lock rotation from within the app, and best of all, the ability to quickly adjust screen brightness using a simple vertical swipe.
It was clear from the very beginning that Stanza wasn't designed by a company looking to bolster sales of books from their own ecosystem, but rather by people who loved to read books FOR people who loved to read books. Clearly Amazon saw the level of detail and care that had been put into this app and were happy to get their hands on it. Whether the intention was to someday incorporate all of this power and flexibility into their own kindle devices and apps, or whether it was simply to get rid of the competition is anyone's guess. I know I have my own theory.
In the meantime, I’m auditioning replacement apps that will give me back the core feature set of being able to access large quantities of public domain books with the added benefit of being easy to use. The apps I have tried with limited success have been Bluefire and Megareader with the nod going to Bluefire so far. While I intend to review at least my final selection at a later date, it does seem relevant to comment on both with regards to how they stack up against Stanza.
Bluefire is the best contender for a Stanza replacement that I've found. Up front Bluefire is free, as was Stanza. With Bluefire there is a set list of book sources and doesn’t seem to be anyway to amend this list. While Project Gutenberg is absent, it does have Feedbooks which has a pretty good selection of public domain books. As a compromise, Bluefire does support loading books through iTunes file transfer, which means that public domain books not on Feedbooks can be downloaded on your computer and then loaded into Bluefire through iTunes. I’m not thrilled with this compromise, but it is a good starting point. The second biggest concern for me is the ability to read a book in a way that is intuitive and non-invasive. Bluefire really shines here. Although the options in Bluefire are more limited and prepackaged, there is nothing missing that will really cause me to suffer in terms of enjoying book reading. One standout highlight I would list is the book mark and annotation feature in Blufire. Book marking and annotation are joined into one feature that seems to work really well. You can jump to any of your book marks or annotations, they preview very nicely, and the annotation is highlighted on the screen.
Megareader is very easy for me to review. It costs $1.99 and allows you to access Project Gutenberg perfectly, however once you get the book downloaded to Megareader, you may not want to read it. The criticism is a bit harsh, but honestly, I would only ever use this app to read books that I simply can’t get in Bluefire through Feedbooks. The settings within Megareader are limited and most critically it has no bookmark or annotation system. It compromises with a simple “last place” memory that will open the book back to the last place you read. However, if you want to jump back to another chapter and then come back to where you just where, be prepared for lots of page flipping to search for your spot. The lack of any sort of book mark or annotation is incredibly disappointing from an otherwise promising app, especially one that costs.
Assuming Amazon has abandoned Stanza development as it seems, the options are currently limited. One would hope that either the ecosystem level players add the option to access public domain catalogs like Project Gutenberg to their repetoir, or independent developers pick up the torch and keep running the race. Time will tell and in the meantime I’ll continue to look for the best compromise.
