Must-Have Features for Every Ebook Reading and Writing App

Invented in 1972-1973 by Martin Cooper, mobile phones have been the most promising technological innovation by far. Today, smartphones, highly advanced and integrated with promising technologies, have replaced traditional cellular phones. Mobile apps are the most crucial feature that makes these smartphones different from conventional cellular phones. Traditional mobile phones have made communication easier and have allowed people to connect with their loved ones instantly. But with mobile apps, smartphones not only help connect with people but also help in carrying out daily human tasks conveniently, be it getting entertained, learning, paying bills, or ordering groceries. Moreover, today smartphones are so reliable that for some introverts, they have replaced friends.

The e-book is one such innovation that has brought a severe technological disruption and has emerged as a promising alternative to printed books. As a result, e-books are becoming more prevalent, and according to Statista, the total e-book revenue reached 1.1 billion U.S. dollars in 2020, up from 983.3 million, reporting the highest recorded market ever. This has led to a rise in e-book app development; e-book apps offer a wide range of e-books to read, and some also provide the provision for authors to write and publish their books. In addition, the ongoing pandemic has given a significant boost to this app category, and as per Forbes, the e-book app’s readership has increased by at least 30% amidst the lockdowns. In this post, we’ll discuss some must-have features for an e-book that developers must know to create a promising e-book reading and writing app. So, let’s move forward and discuss some of these features that every e-book app must have in order to provide a better reading experience.

#1 Access to multiple books in a wide range of languages

Like in a library, we can find multiple categories of books in different languages; an ebook reading app too must have a wide range of books collection of different types and languages. Mobile app development for reading and writing is a very popular choice amongst aspiring developers, which has led to the huge availability of such apps on various app stores. Wattpad, Amazon Kindle, Libby, Kobo, etc., are some of the most popular e-book apps in the USA. Out of these apps, Wattpad is a top-rated platform where readers can read a number of books written by writers on Wattpad and writers can write. To emerge as a successful ebook app in such a competitive market, it’s crucial for its library to be unique and have a vast and exciting collection of books.

#2 Simpler and interactive user interface

The user interface is a vital aspect of every app, which plays a deciding role in its success. A simpler yet rich user interface makes the user experience much better and helps users to derive what they need conveniently from the app. The same thing holds for e-book reading and writing apps; a smooth user interface provides a better reading and writing experience. For quicker adaptability of the app, there should be a hideable tutorial tab that can be accessed any time a user wants help navigating through the features of the app. Various reading and writing tools should be integrated into the apps that enable users to read and write based on their convenience. These tools should amplify the user experience by providing interactive ways of reading and writing. Let’s discuss more of these tools that add up to creating a perfect user interface.

#3 Availability of effective reading and writing tools

Reading and writing tools are critical factors that help improve the reading and writing experience. When reading via printed books, the readers do not have the choice to alter the fonts, zoom in and out or change the brightness of books. An e-book reading experience is much different from reading printed books because of integrated reading tools; a user can increase the fonts of the texts as per their convenience. Users can zoom in and out to get a good look at pictures and texts of the book. Moreover, readers can easily highlight the important texts of the book, bookmark the crucial pages, change the color of the text, and much more based on their likes and comfort level. Reading tools must also include a dictionary that can help readers find the meaning of tricky words and idioms for better understanding. When it comes to writing, users should be given all the writing tools they generally have access to while writing via Microsoft Word or Google Docs. These include hundreds of font styles and sizes, provision of adding images and italicizing and bolding the texts. All these mentioned reading and writing tools help make the user experience much better and feel like writing or reading a physical book. 

#4 Accessibility and uniformity over operating systems

In e-book reading and writing app development, it’s very beneficial and advisable to ensure that the app is developed in a way that it becomes accessible on more than one platform such as the Apple app store and Google play store. To attract a wide range of users, the app must be compatible with many operating systems such as iOS, Android, and Windows. If an app is accessible on only one platform, such as Android, then only Android users would be able to use it, and it won’t reach the iPhone and Windows phone users. Hence to make it more accessible, it needs to be designed and developed for multiple operating systems and their respective platforms.

The other factor that should be considered besides accessibility is app uniformity over multiple operating systems. Uniformity assures that the e-book app feels the same both in looks and functionality. Uniformity allows the users to switch operating systems, i.e., switching phones, to adapt quickly without any extra effort in learning to use the app on the new phone. Uniformity over multiple operating systems ensures that whether a user is using an Android phone or an iPhone has the same user experience and interface so that if they change phone, they don’t find it challenging to adapt to the app.

#5 Provision to create a personalized library

Provision to create a personalized library is a vital feature that an ebook app must have. Users should be allowed to develop their library and store and download books in it. They should be enabled to customize their libraries based on the type of book, language, author, etc. In a personalized library, the users can create sections in which they can store appropriate books. The columns can be divided into romance, fiction, sci-fi, supernatural, all-time favorites books, etc. Additionally, this library should support storage and downloads of ebooks of all formats such as PDF, EPUB, word files, TXT files, etc. This personalized library should be available offline to enable the users to access all the downloaded material in the apps without the internet.

#6 Secure payment gateway

There are both kinds of e-books available on e-book apps, free as well as paid. To get access to read the paid books, users need to pay the given amount and to do so, a secure payment gateway is required. A payment gateway is required in almost all apps to perform in-app purchases, and so is the case for e-book apps. Payment gateway should offer convenient payment options via credit or debit cards, net banking, or via wallets such as PayPal wallet. Along with providing a payment gateway, it also needs to be secure and safeguard all the stored sensitive personal banking details. Hence the payment gateway needs to use two-step authentication and other such credible security practices to ensure that the app is safe to make transactions. This not only helps in making convenient and secure transactions but also helps in improving the credibility of the app.

To conclude

Like smartphones with a mobile app, technology has been a significant shift from traditional mobile phones with only calling and texting facilities; humans have also experienced significant shifts in how they used to do things. One such major shift is the adaptability of e-books; most of the readers have switched from printed media and books to digital books. Although the market of printed media is quite tough to mitigate, the popularity of e-books can’t be ignored. The ebook app development has considerably increased due to this popularity, leading to thousands of e-book apps available on various app stores. In this post, we mentioned some key features that an ebook reading and writing app must have to be helpful to the users and provide them promising user experience. Every developer must integrate these features into their e-book apps for better reading and writing experience.