Lexcycle, the company behind the award-winning Stanza electronic book reader for the iPhone and iPod Touch, has announced its support of the Read an E-Book Week (March 8 - 14th). As part of the week-long celebration that is sponsored by such e-book notables as E Ink Corporation, Sony, IDPF, Random House, Cory Doctorow, and Warren Adler, Lexcycle has created a catalog to highlight a bunch of the sponsors. Books in the Stanza Read an E-Book Week catalog include:

• Smashwords
• All Romance eBooks
• M.D.

We are absolutely humbled and honored to have been named the 2008 Best Free or Ad Supported App in the 2008 Best App Ever Awards. 148apps.com is the company that put the awards together. What makes us so proud is that the nominations came from the public and then the voting was done by the public - this was not some committee deciding the winner but actually votes from the iPhone community.

We just added reviews from GoodReads to a number of Stanza catalogs including the Fictionwise Book Store, Project Gutenberg and Munseys on Stanza iPhone / iPod Touch to help users evaluate whether or not to purchase / download a particular book or not. You can get to the reviews by following these instructions:

• From the initial screen which is titled "Library", please tap "Online Catalog"
• The title of this next screen should be "Online Catalog".

I am a very big believer in being honest and open even if at times the truth hurts as honest assessment is really the only way to improve our product and our company.

I've seen numerous posts indicating that Stanza can't read books from Manybooks.net. I am writing this blog for two reasons:

1. To show users that there is a relatively easy route to get to the free eBooks at Manybooks from Stanza iPhone / iPod Touch
2. To highlight the "Add Web Page" feature in Stanza's Online Catalog

To access the Manybooks site via Stanza iPhone:

• Launch Stanza and from the Library screen, tap on the "Online Catalog"
• From the Online Catalog, hit the "+" icon at the bottom right of the screen

I've been struggling with whether or not I should write this blog because I know it is going to come across as self-serving. I think in other economic times, I would have left this alone, but I've heard so many horror stories this holiday season with layoffs, forced vacations, time off without pay, adult kids moving back in with their parents, etc., that I feel this was needed, self-serving or not.

I want to encourage folks to stop spending their hard earned money on books that they can get for free on Stanza or at Project Gutenberg or other places.

Today, O'Reilly Media announced the availability of David Pogue's iPhone: The Missing Manual as a standalone application. The iPhone: The Missing Manual App is available from the App Store or iTunes at an introductory promotional rate of $4.99 (the list price for the app is $9.99.

For all of you romance fans out there, you can now try out reading on your iPhone or iPod Touch via Stanza. And best of all, its for free. We've teamed up with Harlequin to roll out a holiday promotion today to give away four short romance novels as a holiday gift to romance readers to read on their iPhones via Stanza.