My reading experience was just fine. I didn’t feel any eye-strain, any squinting, nor did I notice myself distracted by my finger-brushes to keep the lines on the screen rolling. I had it set to the medium font size, with no worries, and all in all, I barely noticed I wasn’t reading a piece of paper.

I did use the Shortcovers the way it is being marketed – I read a bit here and there – at the bus stop, then in line at Tim Horton’s, on my breaks at work, and, finally, at the bus stop on the way home. It was a short story, not a novel, but I have to say I could see myself just as easily reading a whole book this way, over a much longer period of bits of free time while in transit.

Long version short? I like Shortcovers. There’s a minor glitch that I’m sure will be dealt with with the occasional misplacement of a space (though it could be in the e-copy of the books themselves, and have nothing to do with the software for all I know), but it didn’t derail me any more than finding a typo does. And certainly, in the case of the story I downloaded, I felt greener. There are some books I read for fun, and read for fun only the once, and then they sit there collecting dust until I find someone to give it to. This eliminates the waste of the non-collectible book in a way I quite like.

There will be more shortcovers in my future, I daresay. It won’t replace physical books for me, but it will likely stop some of my one-shot-reads from piling up around the house.

Congratulations to everyone involved!

Cheryl Kaye Tardif,
bestselling author
http://www.cherylktardif.com