Toronto Review of Books: Besides Alice, what are some of your favourite book apps? Any lesser known app publishers you think TRB readers should check out?

Chris Stevens: I’m desperate for the book industry to produce some work that blows me away, but for now there’s a few Alice clones and not much else. I can see exactly why this is happening. The major publishers have completely abdicated responsibility for producing the digital versions of their catalogues: it’s all handed over to amateurs. You see it throughout the industry. From the typographical horror of most eBooks, through to the lacklustre iPad titles being produced. The big problem is that most publishers don’t care about the iPad or eBooks very much, whether this is an aesthetic rejection based on the publisher’s historical reverence for the printed page, or a reflection of the relatively small profits to be made on the iPad so far, it’s hard to know.

[...] force me to take a break, step back, and write a blog post. Speaking of blog posts, I just ran into this one by an India Amos, whose experiences, though writing five years ago and using Quark (ugh!), sound oddly like my [...]

Anyway, just wanted to say how much I enjoy your blog. Informative but with a sense of humor.

Thanks, Mike

[...] feels; it can make the author seem nerdy or cool; it can keep you from getting lost; it can change how you rate a text. Or it can make you throw the book across the room in disgust. But, wait—if you’re reading [...]

[...] Changing the font changes the way a text feels; it can make the author seem nerdy or cool; it can keep you from getting lost; it can change how you rate a text. Or it can make you throw the book across the room in disgust. [...]

[...] is that most apps, and most publishers, fully justify text by default. On a small screen, with primitive hyphenation algorithms, this is what most often makes me want to stab myself in the eye. At a very small font size, it can [...]

[...] aid up. Squeeeeeeek.) Changing the font changes the way a text feels; it can make the author seem nerdy or cool; it can keep you from getting lost; it can change how you rate a text. Or it can make you throw the [...]