Comments on: 500,000+ downloads of Stanza e-reader for iPhone/Touch; now what if HarperStudio could reach this market?

By: Spider Mattheson

Spider Mattheson — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 10:12:14 +0000

Ereader is a better application and I think it supports PDB DRM (I don’t know for sure because I remove DRM or don’t buy DRM products). I really like the Bookshelf application, as well. You can’t download books directly onto it from the iPhone but it supports a wide variety of formats, including mobipocket. So I can strip the DRM off my mobi files and read them on both my Kindle and my iPod Touch, depending on which device I have with me at the time and if I need a back light or not. Convenient, no?

By: Moriah Jovan

Moriah Jovan — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 00:19:33 +0000

One more thing about bundling ebook formats:

There is a split in opinion about the viability of assigning one ISBN to generic “ebook” or requiring publishers to assign one ISBN to each ebook format they offer.

Obviously, this would be prohibitively expensive for smaller publishers (like B10 Mediaworx) and would stifle any incentive to create MORE (not fewer) ways to read ebooks–especially at a time when the big houses are slow (if not loath) to pursue digitization at all (and then only after much whining and stamping of feet).

I’m not sure that offering a bundle in a zip (or other container) would fulfill a requirement for the use of ONE ISBN should things come to that, but I think a case could be made for its koshericity.

By: Moriah Jovan

Moriah Jovan — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 00:06:43 +0000

Stanza was okay (until it started crashing a lot after a recent update) but I prefer the look/feel and slightly snappier performance of eReader.

Agreed.

By: ficbot

ficbot — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 23:16:36 +0000

I think eReader is the more accurate indicator of e-book penetration because it is linked with Fictionwise, which is a pay site, so the assumption might be that more of the people who downloaded it did so less by random and more because they specifically wanted to use it to buy and read books on the iPod.

Stanza was okay (until it started crashing a lot after a recent update) but I prefer the look/feel and slightly snappier performance of eReader. And I see no functionality in the Stanza app that I can’t get elsewhere. For me, there is no way I would pay $15 for an app like that when Fictionwise/eReader will give me one for free.

By: rjh

rjh — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 21:16:28 +0000

Possibly somewhat remotely related, but if you follow back to the original Forbes article this was based on
(http://www.forbes.com/2008/10/02/stanza-kindle-iphone-tech-personal-cx_ag_ja_1002stanza.html)
you’ll read the following:
“Lexcycle currently offers only public domain books–most of which were published more than 50 years ago–and creative commons titles offered up without copyright by the books’ authors.”

Somebody writing about their own industry in a reputable publication like Forbes should at least know that publishing under a Creative Commons license does not automatically repudiate copyright; neither does offering a work for free.

I repeatedly see mistakes of this kind around copyright issues – if the experts aren’t able to understand it, how is the average end user going to?

By: Bill McHale

Bill McHale — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 20:04:53 +0000

I think Stanza needs to team up with some web publishers who will pay their development costs and then bundle stanza with the eBooks.

By: Chris Meadows

Chris Meadows — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 19:30:40 +0000

I do have to admit to wondering just how many downloads they’ll get after they come out of “beta” and go to their full $15 asking price. I bet the number of people who are actually willing to pay for it will be at least an order of magnitude smaller.

By: David Rothman

David Rothman — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 16:57:22 +0000

Way to go, MoJo! David

By: Moriah Jovan

Moriah Jovan — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 16:53:27 +0000

I especially like Miller’s statement that readers shouldn’t have to buy the same books again and again in different formats. Avoiding DRM would simplify the company’s plan to experiment with the multiformat bundling approach.

We bundled my book in a zip with 8 formats (no DRM): html, epub, imp, lit, lrf, mobi, pdb, pdf because no, we didn’t think it was fair to either lock the content to someone who’d purchased it nor limit the reader to certain devices.

Of course, having a standard format a la mp3 would’ve helped that process along a lot more…