Thanks @gastropod for sharing some of your favorites!
Exploring your suggestions, and clicking around the app store a bit further, I found another option I hadn’t heard of: https://www.yomu-reader.com … It seems nice, and it can also handle OPDS, and the pro version (one-time purchase) can sync via iCloud between iOS and Mac apps.
And then there is also BookFusion, which has no Mac app, but rather a decent web app, plus iOS and Android apps. This one requires a subscription to go beyond certain storage limits.
To bring it back to the topic at hand, all these options discussed allow margins to be adjusted … all except Apple Books!
I use the Convert (from epub to epub) feature of Calibre on my pc to expand margins of the ebooks I read on my Android. They end up looking like books, not columns, definitely more readable. I can’t promise if this will work on your Apple device. Open the preferences from the main Calibre window (ctrl-P). Click on Common Options and then click on Page Setup. Over near the bottom on the right, fill in the left and right margin lines with the values you prefer (I suggest setting left and right margins to 0). Click Apply and then when you convert, your margins will be what you’ve set under Page Setup. I then copy the converted ebook to my Android, where I use my ebook reader.
I accidentally deleted my original post…here’s another version.
Steve Jobs, one the greatest Gods of typography, developed Macs that made brilliant and effective typography something any Mac, and later on, MacBook, could do.
My background is in print magazine publishing, later segueing on to digital. And when “1984” was released, I spent some time screeching like a banshee in the company I worked with that there is no way that Macs can do what they say they can do with typography , including leading, tracking, kerning, spacing, etc., etc. As well as how many fonts a Mac could manage.
But after one sitting and demo with a Mac, it has been decades of loves for Macs and a ton of other Apple hardware and software.
Evidently the Books app is intended for the iPad, which is what I use for reading e-books. The same with the Kindle app. For me the iPhone is a last resort and not an enjoyable medium (after successful cataract operations some years ago I don’t need reading glasses with the iPad)
If you click on the little pencil next to the post’s time stamp, you’ll see previous versions where you can copy and restore your previous post. Pretty slick.
