I wish it had gone differently. I don’t fault Readmill for selling at this point. They did excellent work.
I’ve previously gone on record about my enthusiasm for their platform. (Which reminds me, I need to do a followup to that post, Kindle for iOS has improved dramatically.) Unlike most other firms designing ebook readers, Readmill understood that all of the typographic variables are interconnected. Unlike others, their defaults were beautiful to read.
It’s kind of hard to imagine it going any differently, though. Most people just don’t like reading in public. Publishers just aren’t that interested in working with startups. Ebook retailers don’t care for supporting competing reading apps. Sometimes a beautiful product just doesn’t make a successful product—it just ends up being a beautiful thing that not enough people want.
As for me, I switched to Marvin a while back, even though I prefer Readmill’s look.
Why?
Because the public social reading thing turned me off. I suspect I wasn’t the only one.