TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home
News & views on e-books, libraries, publishing and related topics
Lexcycle releases iPhone book app with Macmillan
Tuesday, March 10th, 2009By Paul Biba
Lexcycle is doing more than just Stanza. Evidently it is adapting the Stanza application so that it can become a “stand alone book app” for the iPhone. Here is their blog write up on their new release. Note the picture below where you can see the app showing you where you are in both the chapter and the book. Lexcycle tells TeleRead that this feature, along with all the ones listed below, will be in the next release of Stanza, which is currently awaiting Apple approval.
What’s most interesting to me is that Lexcycle is not a one-trick pony and is trying to adapt its business model to more than just the Stanza stand-alone application. It will be interesting to see what other markets they are looking to move into. I’m sure this is not the only variant we will see.
Lexcycle has worked with Macmillan Publishing imprint St. Martin’s Griffin to create the Hunted iPhone application. Written by P.C. Cast and Kristin Cast, Hunted is the fifth installment in the popular House of Night series. Users can purchase the Hunted iPhone / iPod Touch application at the iTunes App Store shortly after midnight tonight, giving Zoey fans an opportunity to check out what she’s up to. The application
created by Lexcycle and based on the popular e-book reader Stanza, allows readers to totally customize their reading experience including setting fonts, background colors, and foreground colors. Also introduced in this application are a variety of new features that are forthcoming including:
* one-tap bookmarks (by tapping the top right corner of the screen)
* graphical indicator showing where the reader is in the book
* text indicator showing how far the reader is in the chapter and the book
* the ability to specify a night and day theme for preferred reading styles in bright light and dark settings including the appropriately named “vampire” theme (red letters on a black background)
* full book text search
* “dimmer switch”
