Random House and Lexcycle partner to offer free full-length e-books for the iPhone

On Monday, Random House Publishing Group and Lexcycle announced that Random House and Ballantine will be the first major book publishers to offer consumers free full-length e-books via the Stanza book reading application for the iPhone. This announcement follows last week’s news of a partnership between Fictionwise and Lexcycle to make 40,000 new eBooks available for the iPhone. According to a press release on Lexcyle’s website, the initial offering will include books from author backlists, as well as excerpts from new novels published in 2009. Avideh Bashirrad, Deputy Director of Marketing for Random House commented on the use of free content to market new books, “Stanza has clearly tapped into an audience that's hungry for content, and we're happy to modify our traditional marketing methods to make use of the new technology available to readers today.”