iPhone: Classics, A New eBook Reading App

Things are beginning to get wild and woolly in the eBook reading area of the iPhone.

How many programs are there now?

Well there's one more to come: Classics (animated QuickTime demo at that link).

This is the main interface:



This is what it's like to use -- there is page turn animation:



What's apparently being done here: public-domain classics are being redesigned to make them more like period printed books, complete with contemporaneous illustrations (or verisimilitudes thereof).

I don't know what's going on here. Is animation a function of the reading program or is it built into each eBook?

Here's a posting by someone who participated in the app's design.

Classics is projected to cost, at introduction, $2.99. I don't know if that's for a collection of eBooks, the reading program alone, or what.

This space is beginning to get crowded. Are people going to get confused or just fed up with having to use a specific program to read a desired book? And if someone has many books, how will they easily remember which book is stored in which reading program's library?

-- via Twitter from raminf