Comments on: Shortcovers is great for shopping, but reading an entire book ‘would be very tiresome,’ says Wired blogger

By: David Rothman

David Rothman — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 23:29:58 +0000

Thanks, Chris and Kirk. I tried Shortcovers and had the same interface problems that Chris did. Would it really be that much trouble to make the changes Chris wants? On the positive, yes, the sampling possibilities intrigue me. David

By: Kirk Biglione

Kirk Biglione — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 22:38:28 +0000

I was initially a little put off by Shortcovers, primarily because the reading experience doesn’t compare well to Stanza. After spending a bit of time on the Shortcovers website, I’ve finally come around. This is a great service for discovering and sampling — two very important activities that will play a huge role in shaping the future of digital publishing.

As I tweeted earlier today, I would urge people not to compare Shortcovers to the Kindle (or even Stanza, for that matter). Shortcovers isn’t intended for long form reading. It’s something else entirely

By: Chris Meadows

Chris Meadows — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 22:18:03 +0000

I tried reading some stuff via Shortcovers myself. Was considering posting a review, but not sure I’d have enough to say about them to make it worthy of a full-length article.

So, some bullet points:

* When reading with the iPhone client, there’s no way to get rid of the interface bars at the top and bottom of the screen. As a result, the interface feels cluttered.

* Also, it’s annoying there’s no tap-once-to-scroll-one-screen function the way there is in Bookshelf. It would be a lot easier than having to scroll scroll scroll all the time.

* The “tweet this” function, at least when I tried it yesterday, resulted in a redirect URL that is malformed and doesn’t work. It redirects to “http://http//websiteurl”.

* The uploading function seems to work well, and this might be where Shortcovers really shines for on-line writers. You can upload up-to-5,000 word stories, blog posts, or chapters, and choose whether to have them appear free, with advertising for revenue sharing, or first-page-free and 99-cents-for-the-rest. And Shortcovers explicitly accepts fanfiction. (I suppose because the DMCA shields them from responsibility.) This could be a good way for on-line
writers to get noticed, and perhaps even earn a little cash.