Random House is giving away books to iPhone owners


Stanza is becoming a powerhouse on the iPhone. Recently we’ve seen them ad eReader support, and a full Fictionwise.com powered store…now Random House has partnered with Lexcycle, the makers of the software, to give away select titles from their library.

Authors participating in the promotion are Alan Furst, Julie Garwood, Charlie Huston, David Liss, Laurie Notaro, Arthur Phillips and Simon Rich. They are all offering ebooks up from their back catalog, and Random House is hoping it will lead to sales of their current releases.

You can find these books in a special Random House section of Stanza, which is a free application available for the iPhone and iPod touch.

Personally, I’ve tried to read a long form book on the iPhone – and I have yet to be able to get into it. Having said that – many people are clearly loving the ebook experience on the iPhone, and is quickly giving the Amazon Kindle and Sony eReaders something to worry about.


Kokou Adzo

Kokou Adzo is a stalwart in the tech journalism community, has been chronicling the ever-evolving world of Apple products and innovations for over a decade. As a Senior Author at Apple Gazette, Kokou combines a deep passion for technology with an innate ability to translate complex tech jargon into relatable insights for everyday users.

3 Comments

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  1. I read probably about 20 full length books on my iPhone using Stanza and I love it. I like the convenience of having the book with me at all times. I can pick it up at any time and read for a few minutes. Before I had an iPhone I used my Palm device to do the same. I looked at the Kindle and the Sony ready but two things turn me off right away:
    1. Price – I will not spend that much money on just a booke reader.
    2. Format, size. It’s too big to carry. I put my iPhone in my pocket and go. I can’t do that with a Kindle.

    Mario

  2. I LOVE reading on my iPhone… but I worry if I’ll drop it in the toilet! ;-D

    Kindle and eReader should worry… I have tried the Kindle and don’t understand why anyone would lug around such a large and bulky item that does nothing but provide reading material. Paperbacks are much lighter and easier to use, and there are still a few newspapers around for that occasional read. Not only that, but you can mark up real books all you want, take notes in the margins, and just plain personalize it in any way imaginable. Don’t think they have a note feature on Kindle, do they?

    Yes, many titles can be stored in such technology, but my wonderful iPhone does that and so much more. Maybe they should add a phone to the Kindle! ;-D

    I wonder if anyone has researched how much reading material is actually stored on a Kindle… is it removed after a time, somehow archived, or what? I have books dating back decades that I read over and over. I would hate to lose them to a momentary lack of memory on a reading device…

  3. I’ve got a Kindle and a 3G iphone. I also have Stanza installed on the iPhone. I much prefer the Kindle for actual reading as the screen is larger, you can adjust font sizes to whatever works with your eyes. The Kindle also stores a ton of books. Right now, I have about 50 full length books stored on the Kindle, and another 30 or 40 stored on an SD card. I archive all my books on SD cards and on Amazon so that I can recover them whenever I want. This works great for the “favorite” book re-readers. There is no easy way to archive books from the iPhone. The Kindle comes with a built in archiving feature — Amazon itself — and the SD card of up to 4 GB, which holds an awful lot of books. My 50 full length books right now take up about 1/3 of the Kindle’s built in memory. The SD card is barely over empty with 30 books on it. I think the Kindle’s rated capacity is about 200 books without the SD card. Add the SD card and you’ve probably got room for another 400 books. That’s a lot of books to have handy in a single unit.