Beta yourself

R E ADI NG

Don’t let your devices distract you from the joys of books, mags, comics and other wordy wonders: Craig Grannell delves into apps and workflow ideas to help you read more

THE BASICS

■ Buy wisely

Use personal preferences and storage space to drive your format choices: consider digital for read-once fare and paper for items you’re likely to re-read. Don’t default to Amazon for buying – other booksellers often offer better deals. And monitor Humble Bundle for digital geek fare and comics.

■ Understand ownership

Before you start building up a digital collection, check if there’s vendor lock-in… and be clear on whether that matters to you. Most digital book ecosystems and many magazine subscriptions act in this manner, locking you to a single app. But some offer DRM-free content (such as PDF or CBR) that you can freely use on any device that’s capable of displaying it.

■ Find freebies

Reading is hardly an expensive hobby. Even so, when times are tough you might not want to spend anything. To keep things above board, see if your local library has partnered up with a service that provides online book and magazine loans. Also, go old-school with Project Gutenberg and its 60,000-strong library of copyright-free classics.

■ Use time well

It’s easy to let reading slip. If you’ve a busy schedule, block out time to devote to that new novel. Align formats with how they work best for you: a big hardcover isn’t ideal on a train, and read-it-later apps are a waste when you’re curled up next to a shelf of real books.

■ Remove distractions

Notifications can break your focus, so turn them off while you’re reading – except VIP contacts whose messages you don’t want to miss. This is even more important when using a connected device to read, otherwise you’ll end up in a social media rabbit-hole before you know it. Consider a dedicated device if that helps you concentrate.

Listers of mercy

Bored of reading the same old stuff, or want to see if a book’s worth your time? Goodreads (£free) has handy genre-based recommendation lists and reviews. NIBBLE SOME SERIAL

■ Add some books

Lack time for the classics? Serial Reader on Android and iOS lets you pick from over 800 famous titles and serves them up in 10-minute chunks. Great for chipping away at Frankenstein over a month. (War and Peace requires a rather weightier 235 days.)

■ Go pro

By default, Serial Reader delivers new issues at 9am, but you can change this to suit your schedule. Go premium (£2.59 on Android, £2.49 on iOS) to unlock read-ahead and subscription-pause options, along with cross-device sync.

READ MAGAZINES

■ Filter your selection

Readly (£9.99/m) provides access to over 2000 mags. But they’re not all as good as this one, so under magazines, filter by category/country, or sort by newly arrived titles. Mark those you enjoy as favourites, which you can later access from My Content.

■ Optimise by device

Got a large tablet? Flip it into landscape, tap the screen and use the two-page button to view all those lovely spreads. On a phone, you can load mobile views by using the orange icons found at the bottom of each page. TRACK YOUR PROGRESS

■ Sort your books

Use Book Tracker (£4.99 on iOS) or Bookshelf – Your Virtual Library (from £free on Android and iOS) to keep tabs on a collection. In one place, you’ll have an overview of paper and digital books plus a list of titles you want a buy.

■ Don’t be an angry loaner

It’s frustrating when you lend a prized tome, later decide you’d love to re-read it, find the book’s missing, and forget who you gave it to. Both the above apps let you record who’s got your book and how long they’ve had it.

■ Log progress

If you can cope with the busywork, spend time adding data to your book-tracking app. You’ll be rewarded with stats on how your reading’s going, and can use tags and ratings to build smart lists. TAME THE WEB

■ Enjoy the view

Web pages are full of garbage and doorslams. Happy to read an article later? Send it to a service like Pocket (£free). On an Apple device and want to read something right now? Tap the ‘AA’ button and use Safari’s Reader View for a distraction-free experience.

■ Ditch Chrome

Google doesn’t offer a reader view in its Chrome browser, because advertising. (Settings > Accessibility > ‘Simplified view’ is a poor substitute that rarely works.) Consider Edge, Firefox or Opera instead, since they all have such a mode.

APPY ENDINGS

ALFREAD

The obvious danger with read-later is that you lob articles into a bottomless pit and forget them. Alfread helps you dig into your queue, serving up single pieces of writing that you swipe left to skip or right to send back into the queue. £free / iOS

FULLREADER

This one’s for anyone who doesn’t want to juggle a slew of apps. It deftly deals with text files, PDFs, comics and even audio. The file manager makes short work of large collections, and the adverts can be swiftly nuked with a one-off payment. £free or £5.99 / Android

CHUNKY

If you set about creating the perfect reader for DRM-free comics (and mags), it’d look a lot like Chunky. The interface is flexible and neat, staying out of your way until you want to dig into its many options. On Android? Try CDisplayEx. £free or £3.49 / iPad