I know this is old news since the press release went out last week and there have been lots of blogs and news about this announcement already. I was in NY all week (crazy schedule that kept me going from 8am to midnight every day). Hopefully what I lost in timeliness, I will make up for in interesting content.

In a poll we did back in the summer, visitors to our website indicated that the top feature they wanted was Windows support. We delivered on that with the release of our Stanza Desktop for Windows. The next "feature" was online book purchasing, receiving nearly 400 votes. We've been working feverishly to again listen to our users and deliver on this. The BooksOnBoard deal is the first of many where we will make online book purchasing a reality and in doing so will bring more and more contemporary content to our users.

I decided to document the exact process I went through to purchase a book through the BooksOnBoard interface so others could see it:

• In Safari on my iPhone, I visit www.booksonboard.com. Note this only works if you are visiting the booksonboard site from either an iPhone or an iPod Touch (I have not tested this with an iPod Touch)
• If you are not registered, you will need to register to purchase a book.
• You can find instructions on how to purchase by going to http://www.booksonboard.com/index.php?F=iPhone_ebooks
• I find a book "The Sword Lord" by Robert Leader.
• There are no format issues because the only format that appears is DRM-free ePub. I select it and throw it in the cart to Buy Now!
• I plug in my credit card info and finish the purchase process.
• The purchase goes through and I hit the "Download" button.
• The download button opens up Stanza with "The Sword Lord" and I can start reading.

I have to give my fellow Austin-ites at BooksOnBoard a lot of credit for moving so quickly to figure out a process that is quite clean and straight-forward. BooksOnBoard has done some very smart things by only allowing DRM-free ePub (the only format currently supported by Stanza iPhone) to show when you visit their site from the iPhone. Also, by setting things up such that the download pulls up directly in Stanza is also very nice. They deserve much credit for their efforts.

Also, much credit to Samhain Publishing for making the choice to go ePub. Lexcycle is huge proponents of the ePub standard from the International Digital Publishing Forum, so much so that I am running for the open IDPF board seat. We are very proud of our efforts to drive adoption of ePub (we believe over 3 million ePub books have been downloaded to Stanza) as well as the work we (and BooksOnBoard) are doing to encourage publishers to release their books in the ePub format.

Keep your eyes peeled for more announcements of commercial arrangements in the coming weeks.