The iPhone e-reader company Lexcycle doubled its digital book inventory today–announcing a groundbreaking partnership with a leading e-book retailer, Fictionwise. The deal brings 40,000 new titles to the Stanza e-reader for the iPhone and iPod Touch, including bestsellers like Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight and Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code.
“It’s pretty game-changing,” Lexcycle’s COO Neelan Choksi told GalleyCat in an exclusive interview about the partnership. “To hit the holiday season with this in place is really important.” To date, his company counts 575,000 users around the world, averaging 40,000 book downloads a day.
As part of the Fictionwise partnership, Stanza can navigate that e-book retailer’s digital rights management (DRM) technology–a crucial, controversial side of preventing digital book piracy. “To date, every conversation we’ve had with a publisher has the question: ‘What’s your DRM story?’ For the first time, we have a DRM story,” Choksi explained. “It’s a necessary evil for publishers. Now they can feel secure that their content is protected.”
“We’re trying to find out what kind of content works best on the iPhone,” Choksi concluded, adding that the company also recently partnered with Smashwords, the self-published e-book platform.