Amazon has acquired Stanza

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).

As long as they don't stop me transferring books from the Stanza PC app to my iPod, I'm not arsed either way.

If they let Kindle books be read on Stanza, that'd be lovely.

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.

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.

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....

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.

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.

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.

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.