Filed under: Software, iPhone, iPod touch
Amazon has acquired Stanza
Last month Amazon released the free Kindle application for the iPhone in the US [App Store link], shortly after the Kindle 2 hit the market. If you haven't used it yet, it works quite well. Users can buy books (but not subscriptions) from the Kindle Store via Mobile Safari for reading on their iPhones, although the purchasing process is easier from a desktop browser. Unlike the Kindle, the iPhone app is able to display color images, but it lacks text-to-speech as well as a direct connection to the Kindle Store. Whispersync, which synchronizes ebooks between the iPhone app and Kindle, works as advertised.A few weeks ago, we posted a comparison of ebook readers featuring, among others, the iPhone app Stanza [App Store link]. As Steve mentioned, Stanza works with nearly every ebook format, even Project Gutenberg etexts. I only used Stanza briefly to check it out and I can say that the UI was very nice. Additionally, the folks who created Stanza have an existing relationship with ebook seller Fictionwise. In fact, Fictionwise created an ebook store just for Stanza users.
This week, we've learned that Amazon has acquired the company behind Stanza. We can only assume that aspects of Stanza will make it into a future release of Kindle for the iPhone.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
akatsuki said 5:44PM on 4-30-2009
Well that sucks. It means they will close off other formats. And I was really hoping for b17 of the desktop app to fix some tagging issues so that I wouldn't have to use calibre which is a bit slow and clunky.
Seems like the BD department should have made this call before investing into an iPhone app to begin with anyway.
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Ryan Trevisol said 5:51PM on 4-30-2009
I agree. If you are into reading eBooks on your iPhone, you should grab Stanza while you can. Amazon will "Verizonize" the app, and close off any open competition to their app and ebook store.
I still enjoy playing Tris. ;-)
julian said 7:43PM on 4-30-2009
ah lame!
say good bye to a good read for the commute
THJ said 1:04PM on 5-01-2009
If Amazon were to lock down Stanza and prevent the wide variety of file formats to be read, I give it a week until another developer comes up with an eBook reader that will be able to read everything that was locked out of Stanza.
samu said 5:55PM on 4-30-2009
I hope they either continue support for Stanza or hurry up and put the Kindle and app out in the UK...
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emdubya said 6:07PM on 4-30-2009
Hopefully Amazon isn't so stupid as to kill the features in Stanza that compete with (ie. make it a better product than) the Kindle. Of course, I'm not putting any money on them doing the right thing.
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JDxUndeadX said 7:42PM on 4-30-2009
This is horrible...
I really hope they don't cripple the app in anyway. It better than the kindle app imo. I don't buy kindle books and I enjoy all of the freedom of Stanza.
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John said 8:31PM on 4-30-2009
Amazon is getting both technology and book selection as well as eliminating future competition at the same time. It’s probably a smart move for the company. The impact on consumers is less apparent. There are still plenty of options and exciting projects on ebooks out there.
While I am very interested in Kindle, I am still waiting for these books to be DRM free. It’s just so much easier and “thought-free” when I don’t have to worry about DRM and how I use something. I am more than willing to pay for it, just don’t want to be restricted when it comes to using digital media. Sony’s reader seems hopeful in this regard.
Speaking of DRM-free, Amazon does have an awesome MP3 store that is DRM-free with a large selection and often good prices. It would be nice if they had the same thing with books.
On the note about Amazon, I recently came across an interesting table that details the discounts on Amazon (Thanks to PC World Magazine).
It is at http://www.uberi.com
Maybe someone will find it useful too.
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Barry said 10:37PM on 4-30-2009
You're spamming your site in all your comments, I just reported you. Please diaf, kthxbai.
JD said 10:49PM on 4-30-2009
This can only be bad, if only because Stanza was already delivering the best ebook reader I've ever seen, and was busily innovating features I'd never even thought to want. Being gobbled up by a huge company is never a good thing when the little company is doing just fine, let alone by Amazon, who presumably will encumber the app with Kindle-related crap. They should follow their own music store's model and leave off with the DRM, rent-not-own model. At least Stanza is already good enough that I can happily read on my current version for years to come. But it's sad to think of all the cool stuff they would have added that will now get subsumed in an effort to turn books into locked-away commodities.
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Alexandre Strube said 8:29AM on 5-01-2009
this is bad for everyone outside the us (where the kindld does not work). Guys, america is not the whole world. It is not even a big part of it.
Guess I'll develop my own iphone book reader myself....
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Tagbert said 10:32AM on 5-01-2009
Don't give up on Stanza yet.
Amazon bought Audible and Mobipocket quite a while ago. There has been little impact on those products.
Also, Amazon is unlikely to cut off access to other book formats. Contrary to a lot of people's assumptions, Amazon allows a wide range of book formats to be read on the Kindle and not just books from the Amazon store. The Fictionwise relationship might change as I believe that Barnes & Noble owns that site.
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Rob E. said 2:25PM on 5-01-2009
I'm not ready to write off Stanza just yet. There's certainly an incentive to kill the competition, but there's also an incentive to keep their users happy. As has been said, if Amazon were to just kill or lock up Stanza, it would only be an incentive for the creation of another eBook reader. If Amazon wants to prevent that, then they need to keep the functionality of Stanza, including access to free eBooks in formats other than Amazon's Kindle format. Hopefully that will happen.
Access to competing paid eBook providers could be another issue, though. Competition usually benefits the consumer, and if Amazon can kick Fictionwise and other companies out of the iPhone/iPod market, it could lessen Amazon's incentive to keep improving their offerings.
That said, although I haven't done a lot of research on it, I haven't found many (any?) titles available on other sites that aren't also available on the Kindle store, often at a better price. If Stanza continued to work as it does, but linked to Amazon instead of Fictionwise for its paid eBooks, I would have a hard time complaining about that. Especially since I would prefer to read my Kindle books on Stanza then on the Kindle iPod ap. And what if Stanza's desktop client supported Kindle-formatted books as well? Then every computer that can run Stanza could conceivably become an e-book reader. If Amazon wants to make their money selling e-books (rather than selling Kindles) then this could end up being a very consumer-friendly move, making e-books even easier to find and read.
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Ethan said 5:54PM on 5-01-2009
If they let Kindle books be read on Stanza, that'd be lovely.
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FantomRedux said 8:05PM on 5-01-2009
As long as they don't stop me transferring books from the Stanza PC app to my iPod, I'm not arsed either way.
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Kovacs said 3:16PM on 5-05-2009
So is this the reason why a lot of books at Fictionwise is no longer available for sale outside the US and Canada? This has started all of a sudden.
I don't understand this - Fictionwise is owned by Barnes & Noble, but a lot of links on the Fictionwise mobile site takes me to Stanza books "powered by Fictionwise". How can Amazon own a site owned by their competitors? This is a mess...and I can no longer buy the books I want to read (I live in Scandinavia).
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