Amazon Kindle Graphic Novels

Having just finished the first installment of DMZ, I was on Amazon looking to order the second book when I noticed that a Kindle edition was available for £4 less. Curious to see how the experience differed for a hard copy I bought the e-book version. First up, a word of warning on compatible devices. It's not very clear on the Amazon website, but the DMZ graphic novels (and presumably others) are only compatible with the tablet/phone Kindle apps. You can't read the books on a normal Kindle or the PC application. That didn't bother me too much as I think a lot of the impact would be lost on the Kindle's small black and white screen anyway, so I wasn't planning on reading it on my Kindle, but it's not immediately obvious from the Amazon site that this isn't even an option. First up, the experience on a tablet. My Transformer Prime is about the same size as a graphic novel, albiet with a half inch bevel around the whole thing. Therefore, the pages of the e-book are perhaps 80/90% the size of the print edition. The kindle reader lets you read in two modes. One has each page fitted to the screen and I found this worked for most pages, the text being easily readable. Where things fell down a bit were on the more text heavy pages where the text is readable, but requires a bit of squinting. This is where the other "mode" comes in. Double tapping on a panel zooms the panel in a bit and swiping to change page now moves between panels. Large panels are only displayed partially and moving to the next "page" shows the other side of the panel. It's not quite the same as reading an actual book and purists will probably hate it, but for the convenience of being able to buy a book and read it straightaway and not having a stack of paper kicking around, it works well for me. Also, the price being cheaper doesn't hurt. I also tried out the app on my Phone (Samsung Galaxy S3) and while everything works in the same way as on the tablet, because of the size of the device it's only really feasible to read it in the zoomed in mode. I think for something to read on the bus or such this would be ok, but you are missing some of the impact of the artwork. The S3 has a reasonably large screen, but I think it would work fine on devices with a smaller screen. It's a shame you can't read the books on the PC app; not being able to read on an actual Kindle isn't really missed, but I could see Manga which have a smaller size and black and white print working reasonably well on the e-ink display. The other e-book comic service I have used is Comixology. The main advantage Amazon has over Comixology is that you can buy the DMZ collections from Amazon, whereas you have to buy each individual comic form Comixology (which works out slightly more expensive). The way the Comixology app works on a phone is quite different as well. Each panel is shown separately and stretched to fill the screen. In some ways I prefer that approach, but in others the Kindle approach is better. (E.g. with Comixology, I found myself constantly rotating the phone as one panel would be portrait and the next landscape and then back to portrait etc.) All in all, I think I'll keep reading the DMZ series through the Kindle App and will perhaps look at other books as well.