[jacob_qurika]

First off, thanks again for trying Qurika. As far as feature richness is concerned, Qurika will definitely be on par with other eBook readers. It is just a question of time. I believe all the other eBook readers were developed this way as well. None of them started out with all the features they have now. They were built in over many iterations.

But let me expand a bit more on the the core features for which I built Qurika and why it may still be worthwhile to use it while I build in the missing features.

eBook readers are a giant leap forward in the technology of reading. But there are some key features of physical books that I sorely missed when using existing eBook readers. I built Qurika to fix these problems. Here they are:

1. BOOK SIZE
When you look at a physical book, you immediately get a sense of how big the book is. War and Peace is clearly a thick tome that will take you weeks or months to finish whereas The Old Man and the Sea will take you only an hour or two. eBooks, however, are visually flat 2D representations. Both War and Peace and The Old Man and the Sea present themselves the same way--a flat picture of the cover. Yes, you can look at the word count or the page count and find out that one is twenty times bigger than the other. But the visual representation of the book, which we perceive that much faster and more directly than any text, just doesn't tell you.

2. WHERE IN THE BOOK ARE YOU?
This is related to the previous issue. When you are in the middle of reading a physical book, you always know where you are in the book--beginning, middle, or end--based on the thickness of the part you've read vs the part you haven't. eBooks don't tell you this because, again, they are flat. The first page looks the same as the last page. Yes, you can get that information from page numbers--seeing that you are on page 68 of 287 tells you where you are. But again, the visual representation of the book itself does not clue you in.

3. FLIP THROUGH THE PAGES
When I pick up a physical book off the shelf, I never start reading at page 1. I first flip through it. Forwards and backwards. Are there pictures? Are there equations? Is it a dense font? Is it easy to read? Is it funny? eBook readers don't let you scan with anywhere close to the same ease and speed. They were built to march through page by page, or search for a specific word, or get to a specific chapter. The pleasures of flipping through the pages of a physical book is gone.

To me these were big problems that limited my enjoyment and use of eBooks. I built Qurika to fix these issues. To do that, I created a 3D representation of a book instead of the usual 2D. You can see the edge of the book in Qurika. It tells you how thick the book is. So now you'll know whether you're picking up War and Peace or The Old Man and the Sea. You can flip through the pages quickly (and beautifully!) to see if it's 18th century prose, 21st century haiku, or a bunch of math equations. Once you are inside the book, you will immediately know, just like with a physical book, whether you're in the first half of the book or nearing the end.

Yes, to do this requires using up some of the screen to depict the thickness of the book. I will be optimizing the margin significantly to make this much less of an issue, but it will never completely go away. It's a core feature of Qurika. Using up the whole screen like the standard eBook readers do will always be more efficient--you can fit more words on the page. But to me, losing some screen real estate is totally worth the gains from a 3D representation of the book.

I’ll reiterate that Qurika is not full featured yet. I will add search, bookmarks, highlighting, notes, landscape mode, and so on over time. But the core feature that's being offered by Qurika today is a tremendously different experience of eBook reading--much closer to reading a physical book than what any other eBook reader offers. The most common complaint of eBooks is that they are not as pleasant to read as a physical book and Qurika can bridge the gap. It might not be for everyone, and I respect that choice. But I strongly believe that a unique reader like Qurika adds a lot of value to the eBook community.

Best,

-Jacob