Five e-reader apps for smartphones and tablets: from Wattpad to Scribd

Old-school books are great but they don’t leave much room for clothes and other holiday essentials in your perilously stuffed budget flight-sized carry-on bag.

Kindles can also be an awkward size to pack so smart travellers stick their holiday reading on an app to beat low-cost airline excess fees.

Here are five of the best e-reader apps to try out on your chosen device.

1) Wattpad

All the books here are free. There’s a lot of self-published work so you can try to discover the next big thing. Old classics such as Tolstoy and Shakespeare also make the cut.

wattpad.com

2) Aldiko

One for the scrupulous alphabetically-organised bookshelf type, Aldiko lets you organise your e-books into categories and collections. It’s a super-easy to use too.

aldiko.com

3) Scribd

Not the bookish type? Scribd lets you read comics, documents and even sheet music. For just over £5 a month you can download three books and one audiobook of your choice.

scribd.com

4) Ultimate Classics Library

Finally a chance to read all those hifalutin classics that you’re always pretending to know intimately. A one-off 79p payment gives you access to more than 23,000 books, from Mark Twain to Lewis Carroll via Abraham Lincoln.

itunes.com