The Digital Reader

Ebooks.com are one of the ebookstores I have bought from occasionally. They have an exclusive deal with a couple publishers (Cambridge University Press, for example). They’ve also been quietly developing their own reading apps.

They released a browser based reading app a couple years ago, and they updated it late last year. It’s now called the Amigo Reader, and it lets you read DRMed ebooks that you bought from Ebooks.com with any web browser. Okay, it’s not strictly an app, but it’s pretty useful and a better user experience than its competitor, NetLibrary. Here’s the best part about Amigo Reader: it works with a lot of the ebooks they sell, no matter the format.

It was just a reading app before with the usual annotation abilities. But when it was updated they added some social media features like shared notes, tags, group discussions. Most recently they added the ability to tweet your notes from inside an ebook (this is broken at the moment).

This was never my preferred app, but it was a nice extra. And I think they improved it with the new features (as opposed to just slapping them on). The devs were smart in how they added them, too. You don’t have to buy the ebook from them to join a discussion. This means that Amigo Reader might eventually host a discussion made up of 1 ebook owner and a bunch of pbook owners.

Unfortunately, I don’t think it will see much use. There are other more popular, good alternatives to this app. Also, they’re not doing anything to promote it.