Random House Offers Free Titles on Stanza Reader

Random House is once again expanding its reach in the digital world, this time by offering free e-books on the Apple iPhone.

NEW YORK, NY (Authorlink News, December 8, 2008)--Random House and Ballantine will be the first major book publishers to make full-length books available for free on the Apple iPhone through Lexcycle’s Stanza reader, it was jointly announced today by The Random House Publishing Group and Lexcycle, whose Stanza is the most popular electronic book reader for the Apple iPhone and iPod Touch.
This promotion will allow over 500,000 Stanza users to enjoy free eBooks from a varied list of authors including Alan Furst, Julie Garwood, Charlie Huston, David Liss, Laurie Notaro, Arthur Phillips and Simon Rich. The initial offerings will be drawn from each author’s backlist and will include excerpts for any new hardcovers coming in 2009. Random House is providing links to retailers like Amazon, Barnes and Noble.com, Borders.com, Powells.com and IndieBound.org to encourage readers to purchase more books by these authors.
“A free eBook is a great way to sample a new writer, and help spread the word,” says Charlie Huston, whose novels CAUGHT STEALING, SIX BAD THINGS, and A DANGEROUS MAN will all be available on Stanza. “Besides, it’s good to give things away. They’re books. We write them for people to read them.”
Stanza users already have access to a public domain library which sees nearly 40,000 downloads a day.
“Stanza has clearly tapped into an audience that’s hungry for content, and we’re happy to modify our traditional marketing methods to make use of the new technology available to readers today,” commented Avideh Bashirrad, Deputy Director of Marketing for Random House.
Neelan Choksi, Chief Operating Officer of Lexcycle added, “We are thrilled to bring Stanza readers a sampling of the wealth of titles published by the Random House Publishing Group imprints. But this is just the tip of the iceberg: we look forward to extending this promotion to make even more free titles available.”
The free Random House and Ballantine titles will be available beginning today to all Stanza users. Stanza for the Apple iPhone and iPod Touch is available as a free download from the iTunes App Store or from http://www.lexcycle.com.