Some 85,000 users of the iPhone and iPod Touch had downloaded Stanza as of August 12.
Now, just five week or so later, the cumulative number has shot up to 300,000, consistent with the fast growth of eReader as well. Stanza at this point would appear to be drawing more users. Just a few minutes ago it was #32 on Apple’s list of free iPhone apps for the U.S., one notch higher than this morning. eReader doesn’t show up in the first 50, but certainly isn’t hurting, with 300,000+ downloads of books from paying customers.
A major reason for Stanza’s own popularity could be its tight integration with Feedbooks via Feed’s API. You don’t just get a currently-free reader. From within the program, you can effortlessly download thousands of out-of-copyright classics—works from Charles Dickens’ to Edith Wharton’s—as well as Creative Commons books like Cory Doctorow’s. You don’t experience all the hassles that public domain sites require if used directly. May FBReader follow on the API front! Hey, guys, didn’t we suggest that? Care to do the integration to take full advantage of Android‘s debut?
Marc Prud’hommeaux, the main developer at Lexcyle, responded to our e-mailed questions with other news about Stanza:
Congratulations to Steve Pendergrast and the rest of Fictionwise on their extraordinary number of e-book sales! As it happens, we just passed 300,000 users Stanza iPhone/iPod last week, so 300K seems to be the number of the day. We don’t currently have detailed information on the number of books downloaded, since the book files themselves are usually hosted by our catalog partners like Feedbooks, Munseys, and other catalogs that are in private beta. But we do know that well over 1 million books have been downloaded to date through the Stanza Online Catalog, and the count may well be closer to 2 million.
The comparison to Kindle numbers has been made in articles like this, and the numbers have exceeded all our wildest expectations. Granted, the comparisons cannot be made directly, as Stanza and all the books currently downloadable via Stanza are free, whereas both the Kindle and most books downloadable to the Kindle are paid. However, they do indicate that people are very satisfied with reading on a device with the size profile and DPI of the iPhone (as well as other upcoming mobile devices). One need merely read some of the user reviews for Stanza on the App Store to see the positive tone of the average user’s reaction to reading on such a device.
We are grateful for the encouragement and support we have received from the TeleRead community to date. In the coming weeks, we will be making some exciting announcements that will take Stanza to the next level.
I wonder how many of those are active users…
I downloaded Stanza and even upgraded it but I never use it because its useless.
I don’t want to read books like that… the screen is small and the books look ugly.
I tried magazines but come on… try reading Wired on Stanza and then just go to the website with Safari… you decide.
Sorry for being negative but let’s be honest a little bit!
Tamas-
Looking over the reviews at the App Store, you are clearly in the minority. They are overwhelmingly positive, and the Stanza app has consistently been among the top iTunes applications since the App Store opened. Most of the reviewers that share your opinion that Stanza is “useless” are ones who say they dislike books and reading in general.
And your plea to “let’s be honest” is a bit strange from someone whose posting name links to a billboard site that advertises “Credit Card Deals – Top Card Offers” and “Need Cash? Click Here for Fast Cash”. Tell us, how many users of your web site are “active users”?
It’s free and places a lot of works at your fingertips… which is cool. I still wouldn’t want to read it.
DigitalReading.net used to be my website and it used to have a search feature where you could find ebooks.
It was even suggested by Google’s Librarian Central blog:
http://librariancentral.blogspot.com/2007/02/create-google-custom-search-engine.html
Since nobody used it I stopped paying 10$ per month for hosting. Now someone is sitting on the domain name… maybe they’re hoping I would come back 🙂
btw while DigitalReading Search was still active I had about 3-5 “active users” per day…
i’m one of those people who downloaded stanza within the past week, and i just got around to trying it out yesterday. so far, i’m quite impressed. i love how customizable the display settings are, and there is quite a variety of books to choose from. i tried loading some of my own books (PDF fiiles — which went pretty smoothly), and they look all right. i didn’t have much time to try them out, though. i also haven’t had a chance to try feedbook, but that’s on my list. so far, i have to say that i like it a lot!
It’s funny that people keep saying the iPhone/iPod Touch’s screen is too small for reading. It’s about the same size as the original Palm Pilot’s screen, which touched off the first watershed in e-book reading, and it has double the resolution of that one and color too.
If you load up any ebook reader on any small screen device and just look at the page, you will say, “That is too small”. But if you try to actually read a book you quickly find that the size of the screen ceases to be an issue.
A colleague at work downloaded Stanza to try it out and has quickly overcome any misgivings he may have had and has read several books happily.