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By David Rothman

image 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.

image 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.

 
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