Stanza is not currently compatible with the DRM used to protect books that are purchased for the Amazon Kindle, so Kindle books cannot be read on Stanza. At this time, the only commercial DRM that Stanza is able to read is the "eReader" DRM, which is an option used by booksellers such as Fictionwise.com, BooksOnBoard.ciom, and Powells.com.

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There are several ways to transfer content from your computer to your iPhone or iPod Touch, which range from sharing your books over your local WiFi network, uploading them to the internet, and transferring them over via USB. Following is a list of ways you can transfer your books to Stanza iPhone:

Using iTunes

In Stanza 3.0 and higher, you can transfer your ePub, eReader, PDF, CBR, and DjVu book files to & from your desktop PC by iTunes by dragging files into the "Stanza Documents" part of the "File Sharing" section at the bottom of the "Apps" tab that appears when you select your iPad from the "Devices" list in iTunes. This option is only available for devices running iOS 3.2 and higher (available now for the iPad, and will be available for the iPhone and iPod in late June). Note that if your books are in another format, you must first convert them using a tool like Calibre.

Using Calibre

Calibre is a free application for Windows, Macintosh, and Linux that manages your library and integrates with Stanza iPhone over your local wireless network. It can be downloaded for free from http://calibre-ebook.com. See at the thread at http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?p=391919 for a discussion of how to use Calibre on Windows, Mac, or Linux to share books with Stanza iPhone over your local WiFi network.

Sharing by uploading books to a web site (for epub or eReader)

1. If your books are in any format but eReader or epub, you need to first convert your books to epub using Stanza Desktop.
2. Create a free account at http://box.net if you don't already have one.
3. Upload the ePub or eReader files to your box.net account.
4. In Stanza on your iPhone, go to the "Get Books" tab.
5. Tap the "Shared" segment and hit the plus sign.
6. Select "Add Web Page".
7. For the name, enter "box.net", and for the URL enter "box.net". Tap "Save" in the upper right corner.
8. Select "box.net" from the "Book Sources" section.
9. The box.net mobile site will load in Stanza's embedded browser. Log in with your username and password.
10. You should see the book(s) you uploaded. Tapping the link to the book will automatically download the file and install it in Stanza's library.

Uploading to http://bookworm.oreilly.com (for epub format books only)

1. On your computer: if your book is not in ePub format, then convert your book to ePub (called Open eBook format in the Stanza Desktop Export menu) using Stanza Desktop or Calibre. (If your book already is in eReader format, try the eReader-specific solutions mentioned above and below.)
2. Go to http://bookworm.oreilly.com, and create an account for yourself.
3. Upload your books to your new account at http://bookworm.oreilly.com.
4. On your iPhone: launch Safari.
5. Go to http://m.bookworm.oreilly.com in Safari on your iPhone and sign in.
6. Select the arrow button under Read in Stanza.
7. This will launch Stanza in the Direct Downloads screen. Your book will appear, though it will have a long name with numbers with a URL underneath. Don't worry -- it really is your book.
8. Tap on your book. If Stanza asks you whether you want to download the book, tap Download. The book will open, and it will appear in the categories on the main Library page.

e-mailing books to yourself (for epub or eReader)

1. If your books are in any format but eReader or epub, you need to first convert your books to epub using Stanza Desktop.
2. Create an e-mail account at gmail.com if you don't already have one.
3. Create a mail message to your @gmail.com address from your desktop PC and add the ePub or eReader book as an attachment to the mail and send the message.
4. In Stanza on your iPhone, go to the "Get Books" tab.
5. Tap the "Shared" segment then hit the plus sign.
6. Select "Add Web Page".
7. For the name, enter "Gmail", and for the URL enter "gmail.com". Tap "Save" in the upper right corner.
8. Select "Gmail" from the "Book Sources" section.
9. Gmail will load in Stanza's embedded browser. Log in with your username and password.
10. Important There is a bug in how gmail.com interacts with the iPhone's embedded browser, which means that clicking on an attachment in a message from the mobile window won't do anything. You first need to scroll to the very bottom of the page where it says "View Gmail in:" and tap the "Desktop" link to display the non-mobile version of the site.
11. You should now see the mail that you sent yourself in step #2. Tap on the list item to see the message.
12. Tap the link corresponding to the attachment you sent. The book should then be automatically downloaded and installed into Stanza.

Note: this same method may work for other webmail providers. For example, it is known to work well with http://webmail.aol.com, but http://mail.yahoo.com has some problems. We would be interested in hearing your comments about the success or failure of using other providers for this method of transferring books.

Uploading to stanza.fictionwise.com (for eReader format books only)
Unless your books are already in the the eReader format (e.g., you purchased them in the eReader format), then follow the instructions above and convert your books to ePub (a.k.a. Open eBook) format. You cannot use Stanza Desktop to convert a book to eReader format.

1. On your computer, go stanza.fictionwise.com. If you don't already have an account on this website, create one.
2. Once you've logged into your account, go to Bookshelf, and then click on the Personal Content for iPhone and iPod Touch button.
3. Follow the instructions there to upload your personal content to your Bookshelf.
4. Open Stanza on your iPhone.
5. Go to the "Get Books" tabs, then go to the Fictionwise Book Store.
6. Tap on My Bookshelf at the bottom of the Fictionwise Book Store screen.
7. Click on Set Login Info, and enter your stanza.fictionwise.com account information.
8. Your personal content should now appear in My Bookshelf.
9. Pick the items you want to download, and then tap the blue Download button in the upper right corner.
10. The items you downloaded from My Bookshelf will now appear in the top-level Library under Recent Downloads and Titles.

If you already have an account at eReader.com or www.fictionwise.com, you can follow the exact instructions above using those websites (instead of stanza.fictionwise.com) for uploading and then entering account information for those accounts when you go to My Bookshelf.

Getting Books from a URL ("Direct Downloads" - for epub or eReader)

1. If any of your books is in any format but eReader or epub, then convert that book to epub using Stanza Desktop.
2. Upload your epub and eReader files to your personal website.
3. Launch Stanza on your iPhone, and go to the "Get Books" tab.
4. Select the "Downloads" segment.
5. Tap the plus sign at the bottom of the screen.
6. Enter the URL for your book on your personal website, and then tap Download in the upper right corner.
7. You'll now see your file in Direct Downloads. Tap your book to read it. It will also appear in the categories in the main Library page.

Adding your own Web Page Full of Books (for epub or eReader)

1. If your books are in any format but eReader or epub, then convert your books to epub using Stanza Desktop.
2. Upload your epub and eReader files to your personal website.
3. Create a single webpage that has links to all of your books. We recommend using the full path to your book in the link (e.g., http://www.mywebsite.com/myebook.epub).
4. In Stanza on your iPhone, go to the "Get Books" tab.
5. Tap the "Shared" segment then hit the plus sign.
6. Select "Add Web Page".
7. For the name, enter a name for your webpage, and for the URL for your webpage with all the links to your books. Tap "Save" in the upper right corner.
8. Select your webpage name from the "Book Sources" section.
9. Your webpage will open right there in Stanza.
10. Select the book you want to download.
11. Go back to the main Library page in Stanza, and your books should appear in Recent Downloads.

Sharing using Stanza Desktop
The Stanza iPhone application, which can be downloaded onto the iPhone via the Apple App Store, can upload books from your computer using Stanza Desktop. The Stanza Desktop application is currently available for Apple Macintosh and Windows computers from http://download.lexcycle.com.

1. Launch Stanza Desktop.
2. Go to File->Open, and open a book or document in one of Stanza's supported formats. Note: The text of eReader books will not be displayed, but you can still use this interface to share books with Stanza iPhone.
3. Go to the "Tools" menu, and ensure that the "Enable Sharing" menu item is checked.
4. Ensure that your iPhone is connected to the same wireless network that your PC is on.
5. Launch Stanza on your iPhone.
6. From the top-level library menu, select "Shared Books". You should see your computer name. Select it.
7. Stanza Desktop will then notify you that your iPhone is attempting to connect to your shared library, and request your permission to allow the connection.
8. Once you have granted permission, Stanza iPhone will display a list of books that are open in Stanza Desktop.
9. Tap on the book to download it Stanza on your iPhone. It will appear in Titles and Recent Downloads.

Deprecated: Transferring books via the USB cable (for epub or eReader) this option is no longer be available in Stanza 2.1. It is replaced by iTunes Sharing in Stanza 3.0.

1. If your books are in any format but eReader or epub, then convert your books to epub using Stanza Desktop or Calibre.
2. Download and install the free "iPhone Explorer" utility from http://www.iphone-explorer.com, which allows you to transfer files over to your iPhone using the USB cable
3. Connect your iPhone to your computer using the USB cable and launch iPhone Explorer
4. Click the "Change Root" button and select the "/var/mobile/Media/DCIM/" option.
5. Click the "New Folder" button rename the new folder "Stanza".
6. Browse your computer for your books in the ePub or eReader format and drag them onto the "Stanza" folder.
7. The next time you launch Stanza, all the books in that folder will be automatically imported into Stanza's library (and removed from that folder).
8. Note: any other software that can transfer files over to the iPhone can be used for this method of transferring books in bulk. When Stanza launches, any files it finds in the folder named "/var/mobile/Media/DCIM/Stanza" will be imported into Stanza. For example, you can use the shareware "DiskAid" software to also transfer files.

If you run into problems with sharing, please refer to http://www.lexcycle.com/faq/troubleshooting_sharing for common solutions to issues that users may encounter.

If you do not have a wifi network, but your computer does have a wifi card, you can create an ad-hoc wireless network by following these directions.

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If you want to use Stanza Desktop to transfer books directly to Stanza iPhone, your iPhone/iPod Touch must be on the same wireless network as your desktop computer. If you do not have a wireless network that can be shared between your desktop/laptop and your iPhone/iPod, but you do have a wireless card on your desktop/laptop, you can still share books between the devices by using Internet Sharing.

On Macintosh
You can enable this by opening the System Preferences application, selecting "Sharing", then "Internet Sharing", and then "Airport". Once you have enabled internet sharing on your laptop/desktop, you can then go to your iPhone/iPod's preferences section, enable WiFi, find your computer in the list, and connect to it. Once you have connected, you should be able to share books as described here.

On Windows XP
Follow these directions here to set up an ad-hoc network, skipping step 1:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/networking/setup/adhoc.mspx

When you create your new network, to make things easier, make the network "open" and encryption "disabled". (If you are comfortable connecting your iPhone or iPod Touch to a wifi network with encryption, then set the encryption settings the way you like.) Then connect to that network on your computer (from Network Connections) and on your iPhone/iPod Touch (from the WiFi screen in Settings). Try sharing again, and make sure Enable Sharing has a check mark next to it.

On Vista (courtesy of a helpful Stanza and Vista user!)
Go to the "Connect to a Network" screen, detach from your current network, choose "Set Up a connection or Network", and then choose "Set up a wireless adhoc (computer to computer) network". When the screen comes up, give your network a simple name and set the security protocol to "No Authentication (Open)". This will set up a wireless network. Connect your iPhone to that wifi network and try sharing.

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Yes, although you will need to open the port that Stanza uses (9562), as well as ensuring that the firewall allows Bonjour/ZeroConf/Rendezvous access. When in doubt, try disabling your firewall to ensure that sharing without with it disabled, and once you have confirmed that it works, re-enable the firewall and open the necessary ports.

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We do not currently support transfers from Stanza on the iPhone/iPod Touch to Stanza Desktop, though this is something we are considering for a future version of the software.

Note that most books available in the Online Catalog are also available for download from the web. If you ever have a choice of format, pick ePub. If ePub is not available, pick plain text (.txt).

Feedbooks => www.feedbooks.com
Project Gutenberg => www.gutenberg.org
Munseys => www.munseys.com
Fictionwise => stanza.fictionwise.com
Books On Board => www.booksonboard.com
All Romance eBooks => www.allromanceebooks.com
Smashwords => www.smashwords.com

Also note that Stanza iPhone's books are backed up as part of the normal iTunes backup process, and so will usually be available on your local machine. For one way to extract your books from backup, see http://www.lexcycle.com/content/stanza-book-restore-tool

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For most display options, such as font size and face, background and foreground colors, and interline and justification options, you can change those by opening a book, tapping the center of the screen to bring up the toolbars, and then tapping the center gear-shaped icon.

General Stanza settings and preferences (such as auto-loading the previous books, locking book rotation, and many others) are available by touching the tools button in the upper right corner in the top-level main Library page.

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To delete a book from Stanza, you must first open the book, tap the center of the screen to bring up the controls, and then tap the icon in the upper-right corner to delete the book. Note that in Stanza 1.0, a "delete" button will appear when swiping across the title of the book in the library list, but this will not actually delete the book from your library.

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Provided the book is in the ePub format (which will typically end with an ".epub" string), you can download a book at a URL by selecting the tools icon from the library view and tapping "Download Book at URL", and then entering the complete URL into the field. Alternately, if a web site has the link to an .epub file in the form of "epub://www.somesite.com/book.epub", then Safari on the iPhone will automatically launch Stanza and download the book.

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There is no built-in limit to the size of the content of a book. More likely you merely arrived at the end of the current section, and tapping to go to the next page will load the next section. You can also see the section names by tapping the table of contents button (the book-shaped icon on the left side of the lower toolbar). While Stanza Desktop tried to automatically detect the book's natural chapter breaks when transferring books to Stanza iPhone, it isn't always able to do so successfully, and in those cases it will simply break the book up into arbitrary parts (whose length is usually around 70 pages) called "Part 1", "Part 2", etc. This is because very large individual chapters can be slow to load in Stanza iPhone, so breaking the book up into parts will help to speed up the book's loading.

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1. On your computer, go stanza.fictionwise.com. If you don't already have an account on this website, create one.
2. Once you've logged into your account, go to Bookshelf, and then click on the Personal Content for iPhone and iPod Touch button.
3. Follow the instructions there to upload your personal content to your Bookshelf.
4. Open Stanza on your iPhone.
5. Go to the Online Catalog, then go to the Fictionwise Book Store.
6. Tap on My Bookshelf at the bottom of the Fictionwise Book Store screen.
7. Enter your stanza.fictionwise.com account information.
8. Your personal content should now appear in My Bookshelf.
9. Pick the items you want to download, and then tap the blue Download button in the upper right corner.
10. The items you downloaded from My Bookshelf will now appear in the top-level Library under Recent Downloads and Titles.

If you already have an account at eReader.com or www.fictionwise.com you can follow the exact instructions above using those websites (instead of stanza.fictionwise.com) for uploading and entering account information for those accounts in in Set Login Info in My Bookshelf.

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In some cases, you want to lock the book's orientation in place, and not rotate when the iPhone or iPod Touch is turned. You can accomplish this by opening the Stanza Settings (available under the iPhone/iPod "Settings" application), selecting the "Controls & Effects" group, and then enabling the "Lock Book Rotation" option. This will cause the reading window to remain in the orientation that it was in when it was opened from the library or catalog.

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Please consider writing a review of Stanza on the Apple App Store by clicking here. Also, if you have a friend with an iPhone or iPod Touch, please spread the word by letting them know about Stanza.

Finally, look at purchasing books from the Fictionwise Book Store for Stanza or the Mobile Book Store and our other partners.

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If you are beta testing Stanza, or working with a Stanza developer to track down an issue, we will almost certainly have to ask you to provide your UDID. This page describes details of what a UDID actually is, and how to find it.

When manufactured every iPhone is assigned an identifier that is unique to that physical device. This is known as the UDID ("Unique Device Identifier "), but is also commonly referred to as the "UUID", an acronym for Universally Unique Identifier. It's worth noting that the UDID is anonymous, e.g. if you have a UDID there is no way to tie that to a person.

iTunes will only install applications that have been digitally "signed" by a developer using an Apple-provided certificate. Applications can either be signed for the AppStore where they can be used by anyone who purchases a copy, or for AdHoc distribution where users install the application by adding it to iTunes. With Adhoc distribution the developer must include the UDID of all devices in the certificate for the application. This is intended to prevent people freely distributing their applications.

Below are instructions for retrieving your UDID. Alternatively you can download Erica Sudan’s most helpful and free AdHoc Helper Application from the AppStore.

1) Start iTunes and connect your iPhone/iPod Touch.

2) On the Summary page for your iPhone/iPod, click on the word "Serial Number:" text. Note that the serial number is not the same as the UDID

3) After you click on the words "Serial Number:", it should change to the word "Identifier", followed by a long string of numbers and digits. This long string is your UDID.

 

4) Press CTRL+C (Windows) or Command/AppleKey + C (Mac) and the UDID will be copied to the clipboard, which can then be pasted into an e-mail or otherwise conveyed to Lexcycle.

(these instructions are inspired by the very helpful page at Photo Speed Dial)

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In addition to Sharing with Stanza Desktop, and uploading/downloading books, you can also use Calibre, the free e-book application for Windows, Mac and Linux, to transfer books to Stanza iPhone. Here are a few links to instructions for how to do this:

http://calibre-ebook.com/user_manual/faq.html#how-do-i-use-app-with-my-i...
http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?p=391919#post391919

There is also a user-written tool called calibre2opds to help manage your Calibre library using Dropbox, described at:

http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=64095
http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=62332

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1. Launch Stanza iPhone.
2. Tap the "Get Books" tab.
3. Tap Fictionwise Book Store in the "Catalog" segment.
4. Tap "My Bookshelf" at the bottom of the Fictionwise Book Store screen. The first time you you do this, you'll be prompted to enter your email address and password that you used to purchase the book.
5. From My Bookshelf, tap on the book you'd like to download.
6. Tap the blue "Download" button in the upper right corner. Then the big red "Download" button that pops up from the bottom.
7. The first time you do this, you'll be asked unlock your book by entering the name and credit card number on the credit card that you used to buy the book.
8. After the book downloads, you can read it immediately by tapping "Read Now". You can also go to the main Stanza Library page, and you'll see your book in Titles, Authors, and Subjects.

There are sometimes temporary problems accessing My Bookshelf. In that case, follow these alternative directions for accessing your books:

http://www.lexcycle.com/node/730

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Stanza automatically opens to the last book you were reading, if you previously closed Stanza while you were reading a book. To get back to the Library screen (or "main menu"):

1. Tap in the center of the screen to bring up the toolbars.
2. Tap the back button in the upper left corner until you see the screen that says "Library" at the top.

The toolbars that appear when you tap in the center while reading are very useful. The gear icon lets you change font, font size, font color, background color, line spacing, and many other features. The other icons let you search and jump from chapter to chapter.

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All features in the beta version will be available in the retail version.

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Right now, Stanza Desktop and Stanza iPhone are both free. If we do decide to charge for Stanza Desktop when it is no longer in beta, Stanza Desktop will be offered completely free to people with visual or muscular disabilities. For further information, please send e-mail to initiative@lexcycle.com.

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Yes, Stanza is available for both Macintosh and Windows! They can be downloaded from http://download.lexcycle.com

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Stanza can export to Amazon Kindle, Mobipocket, PalmDoc, Rich Text Format, HTML, plain text, and others. More details can be found on Stanza's Supported Formats page.

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That is by design. Stanza Desktop removes nearly all of the formatting of the text that it reads. This is in order to maximize the flexibility of the user interface, as well as maximize the number of formats we can support. As mentioned above, this makes Stanza Desktop unsuitable for content where graphics or formatting is an intrinsic part of the reading experience. Stanza iPhone / iPod Touch, on the other hand, supports images as long as the ePub / eReader document includes inline images.

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Some PDFs do not actually contain any text that is readably by a computer, but instead contain a series of pictures of text. You can test to see if this is the case by opening the PDF in a PDF viewer (like Preview.app or Adobe Acrobat), and trying to select the text with the selection tool. If you are unable to highlight any individual letters in the text, then the document is simply a collection of images, and will be unreadable by Stanza.

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Extracting text from PDF is more of an art than a science. This is because PDF doesn't structure its text internally as words and paragraphs, but instead it merely stores individual letters and their coordinates on the page, which makes reconstituting the text from the PDF a challenging task. Stanza does its best to figure out word and paragraph boundaries, but there are frequently problems with the identification. If Stanza badly garbles the rendering of a PDF, you can also try to open the PDF in a PDF viewer (such as Adobe Acrobat or Apple's Preview.app), select all the text (using Edit->Select All), copying the text, and then going back to Stanza and selecting File->New From Clipboard to open the selected text from the clipboard contents.

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Simply open the book in Stanza, plug in your Kindle to your computer using the USB cable that was supplied with the device, select File->Export Book As->Amazon Kindle, then browse to the Kindle on the save file dialog. The Kindle will appear in the dialog with the name you assigned to it when you first registered it.

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Currently, no. The default Kindle format that Stanza exports to does not support non-Latin characters, so texts in non-Latin languages won't display properly on the Kindle. The Kindle does support an additional format (Topaz) that allows for embedding custom fonts. We do intend to support exporting to Topaz in the future, but there is currently no specific timeline for its implementation.

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As of Stanza 1.0.0 beta 18, Stanza Desktop does run on 64-bit Macintosh systems, including Snow Leopard.

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Recent versions of the Sony Reader support the "ePub" format natively, which Stanza exports to. For older versions of the Sony reader (e.g., the PRS500 and PRS505), you many need to download a firmware update from http://esupport.sony.com in order to be able to read ePub books. For more details, see http://ebooks.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/138.

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This is usually caused by an out-of-date version of Java. Try installing the latest OS 10.4 Java version from http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/apple/macosx_updates/javaformacosx...

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Stanza iPhone/iPod allows you to edit the title, author, and subjects of your books by tapping the "Edit" button in the library list and making changes to the corresponding text fields.

You can change author and title information in Stanza Desktop by selecting Book Info from the View menu. When you Export to most formats or Save As to ePub format, the information you entered there will be saved.

If you can edit the underlying document (such as using a text editor for editing RTF or plain text files), you can also provide "hints" to Stanza about the title and author of the book. Specifically, if the first line of the document is of the form: "Title: My Title", then Stanza will usualy guess that the title of the book is "My Title". Similarly, if the second line is "Author: The Author", then Stanza will usually guess that the author is named "The Author".

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Stanza doesn't currently display any initial opening text; it is a bit like Preview.app or Notepad.exe in that regard. You can open books by selecting the "File"->"Open" menu item.

As Stanza moves along the beta process, we expect to include some initial help text in the screen to guide the user along commonly used tasks. If you have any specific questions on how to use Stanza to load books and transfer them to your iPhone/iPod (which is discussed at http://www.lexcycle.com/faq/how_to_get_books_onto_stanza_iphone), please don't hesitate to let us know.

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Not yet. We hope to address that limitation soon, but until then, you need to transfer any books in the eReader format to your iPhone or iPod by following the instructions at: http://www.lexcycle.com/faq/getting_ereader_titles_on_the_iphone

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It is unknown at this time whether Stanza will support Linux. We are still considering the feasibility of supporting the platform. Note: it has been reported that Stanza has been run successfully on Linux in virtualization environments such as VirtualBox.

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On Mac, you need to delete your preferences for Stanza Desktop.

1. Close Stanza.
2. Open the Finder, and then navigate to your Home folder, then to "Library" and then "Preferences".
3. Delete the files named "stanza.container.swt.plist" and "stanza.plist".
4. Launch Stanza, and try sharing.

On Windows, you have to edit your registry to delete your preferences. It's a lot safer and easier to just to uninstall and reinstall Stanza Desktop. (You don't need to uninstall Stanza iPhone!)

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The Online Catalog that you can use to browse books in Stanza iPhone is not yet available for Stanza Desktop. Most books available in the Online Catalog are also available for download from the web. If you ever have a choice of format, pick ePub. If ePub is not available, pick plain text (.txt).

Feedbooks => www.feedbooks.com
Project Gutenberg => www.gutenberg.org
Munseys => www.munseys.com
Fictionwise => stanza.fictionwise.com
Books On Board => www.booksonboard.com
All Romance eBooks => www.allromanceebooks.com
Smashwords => www.smashwords.com

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An error mentioning "JVM_Bind" usually indicates that there is another instance of Stanza already running on the computer. There is a known bug with Stanza that sometimes prevents it from quitting completely when the Stanza window is closed with the "X" button in the upper-right corner of the window. The simplest solution to this problem is to reboot the computer, but another option is to open the "Task Manager" program by either hitting the Ctrl+Shift+Esc keys simultaneously or else going to the Start->Run menu and typing in "taskmgr". Once it launches, you can look for instances of "Stanza" in the list and select them and click the end process button. To prevent the problem from happening in the future, quitting Stanza using the File->Quit menu item will ensure that Stanza exits completely.

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Apple recently released a version of Bonjour that is not compatible with Stanza Desktop. Until we are able to track down and resolve the incompatibility, the solution we have found is to remove Bonjour completely using the Add/Remove Programs control panel, then reboot and re-install Stanza.

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For formats that don't contain any embedded chapter information (such as plain text, Rich Text Format, and some variants of HTML and PDF), Stanza tries to automatically detect where chapters are. It usually does a good job, but its rules are not perfect, and it can sometimes make bizarre judgements about where a chapter break is. Aside from looking strange and hindering chapter-based navigation, there are no other adverse effects of mis-identified chapters. If you are willing to share the offending text with us by posting to our forums, we are always looking for data that will help us improve our chapter identification heuristics.

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If you are experiencing problems with Stanza, either due to it failing to launch, or due to errors or bad behavior during the program running, it is helpful to report any error messages that Stanza might be generating. This information obtained through the use of the Apple Console.

If you've never used the console log before, launch this application:

/Applications/Utilities/Console.app

It should show the console log in a window titled "console.log". Scroll to the bottom for recent messages.

If you're not sure whether a message is from your app's failure or not, keep the console log open and try launching your app again. If it outputs anything to the console log, you'll see the window contents change.

If there are messages in console.log, copy and paste them into your message, either to support or to the user forum on which you are posting.

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If you are having problems sharing books between Stanza Desktop and Stanza iPhone/iPod, please try these suggestions:

1. If you are on Windows, and when you attempt to enable sharing with the "Tools"->"Enable Sharing" menu you get an error about Bonjour not being installed despite having already installed it, it sometimes helps to open the "Add/Remove Programs" control panel and remove Bonjour completely, then reboot, and then do a fresh install from the file at http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/bonjourforwindows.html.
2. If you are unable to see your PC's name in the "Shared Books" section of Stanza iPhone, and you 1) have a book open in Stanza Destop, and 2) have enabled sharing in Stanza Desktop without any errors, then you should check to ensure that both the machines are on the same wireless network. You can compare the names of the wireless networks for each device:
   • iPhone/iPod: Launch the "Settings" application and examine the value of the "Wi-Fi Section".
   • Windows: Open the "Control Panel" program and select the "Network" option to see the wireless network name.
   • Macintosh: Open the "System Preferences" application, select "Network", highlight the "AirPort" section of the list, and examine the setting of the "Network Name".
3. If you are not part of an existing wireless network, but your desktop does have a wireless card, you can still share books between your desktop and iPhone/iPod by following these instructions
4. If you are able to see your PC's name from the "Shared Books" menu, but it gives a timeout error after trying to connect, then the problem may be one of the issues listed below.
   
   1. It may be that Stanza Desktop has popped up a dialog asking you whether you want to allow the device to connect. The dialog is sometimes hidden by other windows, so you may want to try moving other windows out of the way to see if it is visible. You can also bypass the need for this dialog by selecting the "Tools"->"Allow anonymous sharing" menu item and then restarting Stanza Desktop.
   2. Ensure that if your firewall is enabled, that it allows traffic to port 9562, which is the port over which Stanza shares books. Stanza also uses Apple's "Bonjour" service to broadcast the sharing service to the iPhone. If firewall problems persist, you may consider disabling the firewall altogether while you are transferring books between your devices.
   3. Your router may have a firewall enabled that is preventing your iPhone from connecting to your PC. Firewall configurations on routers vary so greatly that it isn't possible to provide generic instructions for opening access to Stanza, but you may want to consult your router's documentation for instructions on how to disable your router's firewall long enough to see if doing so allows you to share your books. Alternatively, if you have access to another wireless network, you may want to connect both your PC and your iPhone to the other network and see if the problem resolves itself.
   4. Are you connected to a public wifi network, such as one provided by your school or work? If so, the administrator may have configured the network to prevent data transfers like sharing. In this case, we recommend uploading to a website, as described in this faq:

      http://www.lexcycle.com/faq/how_to_get_books_onto_stanza_iphone

   5. Look at your the settings for your wifi connection on your iPhone, and make sure you have HTTP Proxy set to "OFF".
   6. If you are running a VPN for connecting to school or work, make sure the VPN is turned off when you want to share using Stanza Desktop.
   7. Is it possible that you accidentally selected "Never" from the pop-up windows asking for permission to connect your computer and your iPhone? If so, you might need to delete your permissions, as described in this FAQ:

      http://www.lexcycle.com/node/969

   8. Did you used to be able to share and now you suddenly can't? If so, try rebooting your computer, and briefly switching your iPhone to Airplane Mode and then back again. Sometimes you just need to reconnect both devices to the network to get them communicating properly.

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There have been scattered reports of this problem, but it is by no means the expected behavior: upgrades should always preserve all of your books. We believe that the problem is due to iPhone's upgrade process, whereby if something goes wrong (such as a corrupt download that it needs to re-try), then the iPhone handles it by deleting the application first, and then installing from scratch. Unfortunately, when an application is deleted from the iPhone, all of its data is deleted as well, which, in the case of Stanza, includes all of the books. However, if you have synchronized the iPhone/iPod with iTunes before you installed the update, you can restore the books from the backup by following the directions at http://www.lexcycle.com/faq/restoring_from_backup.

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Users of many other iPhone applications have reported data loss problems after installing updates, and sadly, Stanza is no exception. This is a rare bug in Apple's iPhone/iPod operating system.

There is a procedure you can follow to prevent losing your Stanza library until Apple has resolved the issue. Note that this procedure works equally well for all iPhone applications, not just Stanza.

1. Back up your iPhone by syncing it with iTunes just before you install any update.
2. Disconnect your iPhone and install the update on the device.
3. If you didn’t lose your books, all is fine. If you did lose your library, you can restore it from the backup. But you have to be very careful. When you connect your iPhone to your computer, iTunes automatically overwrites the existing backup with a new one. Since you just lost your data on the device, this will effectively delete your previous backup from iTunes! To prevent this, you need to do the following:
1. Disable automatic syncing for your iPhone in iTunes’ preferences before you connect the iPhone again (iTunes > Preferences > Syncing > Disable automatic syncing for all iPhones and iPods).
2. Connect your iPhone and wait until it appears in iTunes’ sidebar. Since syncing is disabled, iTunes won’t back up your data automatically.
3. Right-click (or control click) on the iPhone and select “Restore from backup”.

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This is a known problem with the iPhone Operating System, and has nothing to do with Stanza itself. Any third-party application may trigger this bug. It is discussed at: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=7834367. We expect that a future update to the iPhone OS will prevent this problem from happening.

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Every router has a different was of configuring its firewall and multicast settings, and they all have different default settings. Please refer to your router's manual for an authoritative description of the process.

For the common Linksys Cable/DSL Router (such as the BEFSR41 v4.1), you can modify the router setup by going to the Security page (which is often at a URL like: http:// 192.168.1.1 /Filter.htm), and down near the bottom, you'll see a setting for Filter Multicast. By default, it will be disabled. Change it to enabled, save the settings, and you'll should be able to start sharing between Stanza Desktop and Stanza iPhone.

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Does your TOC look like this?

<item id="ncx" href="toc.ncx" media-type="text/xml"/>

If so, the "media-type" is incorrect. It should read:

<item id="ncx" href="toc.ncx" media-type="application/x-dtbncx+xml"/>

The fact that epubcheck doesn't validate this requirement in the spec is a bug in epubcheck itself:

http://code.google.com/p/epubcheck/issues/detail?id=21

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There are sometimes temporary problems accessing My Bookshelf. To download your books immediately, try this instead:

1. Go to Online Catalog in Stanza.
2. Tap the plus-sign in the lower right.
3. Select "Add Web Page".
4. Enter a name for your the web page (e.g., Stanza by Fictionwise), and then enter mobile.stanza.fictionwise.com for the URL. Make sure to type that exact address, without a "www"! Tap Save.
5. Tap your web page name in the Online Catalog.
6. Scroll down to the bottom of the page, and tap Sign In,
7. Sign in with the username and password you used when you bought the book in Stanza.
8. Then tap the Download link next to your book, and proceed from there.
9. If your download fails, tap the "Browse" back arrow in the upper left corner, and tap where it says "If the download doesn't start, click here".

You can follow these instructions for accessing books you have purchased from www.eReader.com and www.fictionwise.com, as well, by entering those URLs.

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Lexcycle and Fictionwise are partnering to provide the ability for users of Stanza on the iPhone and iPod Touch to purchase titles in the eReader format from stanza.fictionwise.com and read them right on their iPhone.

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Yes. Stanza supports all titles in the eReader format, whether it was purchased from stanza.fictionwise.com or not. You can download titles into Stanza using Stanza's embedded web browser from other sites you may have purchased your books.

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Stanza Desktop does not yet support displaying books in the eReader format, but you can transfer eReader books to Stanza iPhone by Sharing using Stanza Desktop, just as you would any other compatible file format.

You can also upload your eReader books to your bookshelf at stanza.fictionwise.com, www.fictionwise.com, or www.eReader.com, and then download them to Stanza iPhone.

For complete details on either of these processes, please see the instructions for eReader books here:

http://www.lexcycle.com/faq/how_to_get_books_onto_stanza_iphone

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If there is a problem opening a book in the eReader format, please check the User Forums to see if anyone else has experienced the problem, and if not, make a new posting to let us know about the issue. In some cases, you may work around the problem by loading the "eReader" application from the App Store onto your phone and using that reader for those files that cannot be loaded by Stanza.

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Getting Started
Launch Stanza on your iPhone, and select "Online Catalog" from the first screen. Select "Fictionwise Book Store" from the next screen.

You're now in the Fictionwise Book Store for Stanza. Before doing anything else, read "How to use the Fictionwise Store" right at the top of the screen. This will tell you all about how to buy a book from Fictionwise to read with Stanza on your iPhone.

Searching for Books
You can find books in the Fictionwise Book Store by browsing in the different categories listed or by searching for the titles and authors you are interested in. Just tap the magnifying glass in the upper right corner and enter your search terms.

When you've found a book you like, tap on it to view a description of the book on the Book Info screen.

Buying Books
To buy a book, scroll down to the bottom of the Book Info screen, and click "Buy Now at Fictionwise". On the next screen, tap "Add to Cart" to add the book to your Stanza by Fictionwise shopping cart. To browse for more books in Stanza, just click on the back button ("Book Info") in the upper left hand corner.

If this is your first time buying a book on Stanza by Fictionwise, you'll have to create a Stanza by Fictionwise account. (This is different from other Fictionwise accounts!) You can do this right on your iPhone by tapping the "Create Account" button. You can also create an account at http://stanza.fictionwise.com/servlet/mw?action=view&template=login.htm.

Reading Purchased Books in Stanza
Once you have bought your books, go back to the Fictionwise Book Store in the Online Catalog on Stanza. At the bottom of the Fictionwise Book Store screen, you'll see "My Bookshelf". Tap there to see all of the books you've bought from Stanza by Fictionwise. The first time you you do this, you'll be asked to enter your Stanza by Fictionwise username and password that you created earlier. Then tap "My Bookshelf" to see the books you've purchased from Fictionwise.

From My Bookshelf, tap on the book you just bought. Tap the blue "Download" button in the upper right corner. The first time you do this, you'll be asked enter the credit card number you used to buy the book in order to unlock it. Then just go to the main Stanza Library page, and you'll see your book in Recent Downloads.

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This probably means that you followed a link in your email receipt from Fictionwise or you went to the Fictionwise website in Safari on your iPhone to download your book. Instead of using Safari, please follow these instructions to download your book, which can be found in the "How to Buy Books" section of the Fictionwise Book Store:

1. Launch Stanza iPhone.
2. Go to the Fictionwise Book Store in the Online Catalog.
3. Tap "My Bookshelf" at the bottom of the Fictionwise Book Store screen. The first time you you do this, you'll be prompted to enter your Stanza by Fictionwise username and password that you used to purchase the book.
4. From My Bookshelf, tap on the book you'd like to download.
5. Tap the blue "Download" button in the upper right corner. The first time you do this, you'll be asked unlock your book by entering the name and credit card number on the credit card you used to buy the book.
6. After the book downloads, you can read it immediately by tapping "Read Now". You can also go to the main Stanza Library page, and you'll see your book in Recent Downloads, Authors, Titles, and Subjects.

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Anything! However, Stanza is especially designed for reading large bodies of text where formatting is not an integral part of the reading experience. It is more appropriate for reading novels, stories, essays, and news articles. Graphics-heavy content like textbooks and multimedia web sites will be difficult to read using Stanza.

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Stanza iPhone and iPod Touch currently supports the eReader DRM, meaning that any files in the eReader format can be opened on your device. Stanza Desktop does not currently support any DRM at all. In the coming weeks and months we expect to expand our options for reading content with various forms of digital rights management.

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Stanza Desktop contains built-in reading support for DRM-free Amazon Kindle, Mobipocket, Microsoft LIT, and PalmDoc, as well as Microsoft Word, Rich Text Format, HTML, and PDF. Stanza iPhone / iPod Touch supports eReader with or without DRM and ePub without DRM. More details can be found on Stanza's Supported Formats page.

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A pdb file is just a generic container, a bit like a zip file: it can contain anything. It's really just a file extension, and it doesn't tell you anything about the format of the file contained within. Usually a file ending .pdb is either in Mobipocket format, PalmDoc format, or eReader format.

If the file turns out to be in the Mobipocket format, then it can be opened in Stanza Desktop if is not DRM-protected. You can then use Stanza Desktop to transfer it the iPhone. if it is DRM-protected Mobipocket format, you won't be able to read it with Stanza on the iPhone or Stanza Desktop.

If the file turns out to be in the eReader format, it cannot be opened in Stanza Desktop yet, but it can be opened on Stanza iPhone regardless of whether it has DRM or not. Here are detailed instructions for transferring your personal content in eReader format to your iPhone:

http://www.lexcycle.com/faq/getting_ereader_titles_on_the_iphone

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There are numerous places to find eBooks on the internet. Note that Stanza Desktop does not yet support books encumbered with Digital Rights Management (DRM); however, Stanza iPhone / iPod Touch now supports DRM-encrypted eReader formatted books in addition to DRM-free ePub and eReader files.

• Project Gutenberg: Millions of free, public domain books, generally available in text and HTML formats. Includes just about any classic book you can think of from before 1923, and a few more recent books.
• The Internet Archive: The Internet Archive is scanning books in libraries around the world and making them available for free in a range of formats, including searchable PDFs of the original page images. They have about half-a-million texts so far, and counting.
• Baen Free Library: A pioneer in the e-book field, Baen makes selected titles from it’s line of science fiction and fantasy books available for free download. Lots of good stuff for SF fans! There are also instructions to add a Baen Free Library catalog for Stanza iPhone users.
• Free-eBooks.net: A huge directory of free e-books, most of which are self-published. You’ll have to do some digging to find quality stuff here, but there are plenty of good books to be found with some patience.
• Memoware: Memoware includes tens of thousands of public domain books, formatted for a wide range of portable devices. They also have a premium bookstore where more current, mainstream books can be bought.
• All Romance eBooks: ARe is a large e-book store focused on women's fiction and romance eBooks and have over 6000 DRM-free ePubs romance titles available. All of the 6000 titles have excerpts available in the All Romance eBooks catalog on Stanza iPhone / iPod Touch.
• Fictionwise: A huge e-book bookstore, specializing in romance and science fiction, with titles formatted for a range of devices. Check out their always-changing selection of free e-books drawn from their collection. Note that only books in "multiformat" will be readable with Stanza Desktop. Stanza iPhone can read any book from the Stanza Books by Fictionwise Store.

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Stanza does have the ability to read contemporary content, provided that the electronic book is in a format that Stanza supports, and that the book is either unprotected by "Digital Rights Management" (DRM) or uses the eReader DRM. The majority of contemporary works are protected by DRM, which prevents books from being read on "unauthorized" devices and generally prohibits the copying of the book. The only DRM format currently supported by Stanza is the eReader DRM, although we are looking to expand this in the coming weeks and months.

One place to purchase books that use Fictionwise's eReader DRM is the bookstore at stanza.fictionwise.com.

Other places where you can obtain books (both free and commercial) are:

• Feedbooks (http://feedbooks.com) and Project Gutenberg (http://gutenberg.org) are two examples of free sites where there is a fair amount of modern material.
• BooksonBoard (http://www.booksonboard.com) sells many works of modern romance from Samhain Publishing in DRM-free as well as a wide variety of eReader DRM formatted books.
• Fictionwise (http://stanza.fictionwise.com) sells many works of modern fiction and nonfiction in "Multiformat", which means they do not have DRM in addition to eReader DRM books.
• O'Reilly's Safari Books (http://safari.oreilly.com) collection is an excellent resource for non-DRM technical material.
• Pan Macmillan (http://www.panmacmillan.com) has started selling a number of titles without DRM protection.
• AllRomanceeBooks (http://allromanceebooks.com) now sells numerous romance titles without DRM protection. In addition, ARe also has a number of free titles available for download.
• Smashwords (http://smashwords.com) also sells numerous contemporary titles, generally from independent eBook authors.
• eBooks Just Published (http://www.ebooksjustpublished.com/) lists a new ebook each day.
• A more comprehensive list of online bookstores can be found at: http://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/E-book_stores

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Stanza iPhone and Stanza Desktop are both currently free!

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Stanza Desktop and Stanza iPhone can display text in most languages, though we have do not have extensive user feedback on the quality of presentation for all languages. We welcome your feedback about your reading experience in Japanese, Hebrew, Arabic, Chinese, Russian, or any other language not using the Roman alphabet.

Stanza iPhone is available in a variety of languages. The language used depends on the system language setting of your iPhone. If your language is not available, and you would like to volunteer to translate our software into your native language, please let us know.

Stanza Desktop is localized only for English at this time.

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No. You only need to register on the lexcycle.com web site in order to post on our User Forums. Using the Stanza software itself does not require any registration.

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Provided your book is a valid ePub or eReader file, having a link to it with the "stanza://" protocol will cause Stanza to be launched. So if your book is located at "http://somesite.com/books/mybook.epub", you just need to have an additional URL like "stanza://somesite.com/books/mybook.epub" to automatically download and import the book into Stanza's library.

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Contact our sales department at sales@lexcycle.com - we've put together a number of programs for booksellers like the one we've put in place with Fictionwise and BooksOnBoard. Also, http://booksellers.lexcycle.com provides instructions for enabling your users to download books they purchase on your site directly onto their iPhone or iPod Touch.

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Contact sales@lexcycle.com for more information about being listed in the Lexcycle Default Catalog. Detailed instructions for making a catalog that can integrate with the Lexcycle Online Catalog can be found at http://developer.lexcycle.com.

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The native format for Stanza is ePub, which is the Open eBook standard from the International Digital Publishing Forum (http://www.idpf.org/). ePub is supported in Stanza Desktop, iPhone, and iPod Touch, as well as in Adobe Digital Editions, Apple's iBooks, and the next generation of e-ink readers like the Sony Reader (PRS-505).

There are a number of ways to create ePub content:

1. Calibre (http://calibre-ebook.com): a free tool for Windows, Mac OSX, and Linux that allows you to convert to ePub from a wide variety of formats. Calibre currently does a better job than Stanza Desktop at preserving styles and formatting of source documents.
2. Adobe InDesign (http://www.adobe.com/products/indesign/): InDesign is a high-end publishing tool for authors and publishers, and supports the creation of ePub files.
3. Feedbooks (http://feedbooks.com/share/): You can log into Feedbooks and create your own content, which will be made available in ePub, as well as other formats like PDF and Kindle. In addition, any books you create and share will automatically be included in the "Free Books by Feedbooks" section of Stanza's Online Catalog under the "User Created Books" area, so you don't need to download and transfer the book separately.
4. BookGlutton API (http://www.bookglutton.com/api): If you have your book in HTML format, you can convert it into ePub using their online conversion API
5. ePub Tools (http://code.google.com/p/epub-tools): Command-line tools suitable for batch processing and integration into toolchains. Includes tools for conversion from Word, RTF, DocBook, TEI, and FictionBook.
6. Adobe PDFXML (http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/mars) - Per Adobe's blog, this is useful for making small changes to existing EPUBs.
7. eScape - ePub Creator (http://www.infogridpacific.com/igp/AZARDI/eScape%20-ODT2ePub) - "It lets you instantly and effortlessly turn Open Office Writer documents (ODT) into perfect ePubs..."
8. eCub (http://www.juliansmart.com/ecub) - "a simple to use EPUB and MobiPocket ebook creator"
9. Sigil (http://code.google.com/p/sigil/) - "Sigil is a multi-platform WYSIWYG ebook editor. It is designed to edit books in ePub format."
10. Easy EPUB (http://www.easypress.com/products/aqpep/) - By simply uploading your InDesign or Quark book files, EasyEPUB will quickly produce a fully compliant EPUB version of your book within 5 minutes.
11. DNAML's PDF2EPUB (http://www.pdftoepub.com/) - Convert PDFs to EPUBs in 6 easy steps. The nice thing about this software is that it can handle headers and footers which are often challenging when converting PDFs.
12. ODFToEPub (http://www.pincette.biz/odftoepub/) - An OpenOffice extension that lets you save a document as an ePub.
13. Stanza Desktop (http://stanza.lexcycle.com): Stanza allows you to convert from a large variety of formats like MS LIT, Mobipocket, Kindle, RTF, PDF, MS Word, and many more into ePub

Ultimately, an ePub file is merely a zip file consisting of XHTML and XML metadata, so it is possible to create one "by hand" yourself. A good tutorial for this can be found at http://www.jedisaber.com/eBooks/tutorial.asp.

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Apple recently released a version of Bonjour that is not compatible with Stanza Desktop. Until we are able to track down and resolve the incompatibility, the solution we have found is to remove Bonjour completely using the Add/Remove Programs control panel, then reboot and re-install Stanza.

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