ScrollMotion, based in New York City, has now landed deals with a list of top publishers, including Houghton Mifflin, Simon & Schuster, Random House and the Penguin Group.

Using its e-book reader technology called Iceberg, ScrollMotion will make several e-books available on the iPhone and iPod touch, including Stephenie Meyer's Twilight and Philip Pullman's The Golden Compass. Each book will be a separate downloadable application.

E-Book News

There are other e-reader applications on the market, including Stanza, Bookshelf, eReader and Classics, and the market is expected to see more as publishers begin turning to mobile devices as a place to put their content.

Earlier this month, HarperCollins made some of its classics available on Nintendo DS devices. Online retailer Amazon released the Kindle, which provides access to newspaper content; and Penguin released Penguin Mobile, an iPhone app on the App Store that makes the features of the Web site, blog, and book previews available on the iPhone. Some Penguin e-books are already available to iPhone owners through eReader.

And there is Random House, which has closed a deal with e-book reader Stanza to allow a slew of books to be read on the iPhone and iPod touch.

While the technology behind e-books has been here for some time, there was not a good enough device on the market available to consumers who wanted to read an e-book, say analysts.

"While people did not read e-books as much on [the] Palm Pilot, screens on the iPhone are pretty darn good for reading this content," said Michael Gartenberg, vice president of mobile device strategy at Jupitermedia. "The iPhone, which is connected by a vast wireless network , has a good resolution screen."

While newspapers and books will continue to be platforms for reading, there is a shift toward reading using mobile devices.

"For a lot of consumers who don't want to carry a separate device with them, the platform is the right kind of platform to steer this forward to the next level," Gartenberg added.

Publishers on Board

Having publishers such as Random House and Houghton Mifflin jumping on the bandwagon only makes the situation better.

"No matter how good the technology was, there was nothing interesting to read," Gartenberg said. But that has changed with devices such as the iPhone and iPod touch. "We are starting to see devices good enough to tap into the ecosystem and [books] consumers would want to read on these devices."

While ScrollMotion works directly with publishers, others are putting e-books in the hands of iPhone owners out of copyright, including developer Alexandru Brie, who has developed the TouchBook Reader software.

"What they are doing is different than my business: While they address the best sellers by signing deals with major publishers, I target the long tail by publishing classic works out of copyright," Brie said. "I also provide the technical solution for independent authors, helping them get their books out on the App Store -- either for free to promote the paper version, or as commercial apps, in which case they are in charge of the distribution, which requires [that they have] iPhone developer accounts. My framework is set up to allow authors to generate e-books without writing any code."