After a week of bad news, Random House partnered with Lexcycle today, offering a number of free e-books for the Stanza reader on the iPhone and iPod Touch--betting that free digital books will drive sales for new books.

As part of the deal, the 575,000 Stanza users can access free titles by Alan Furst, Julie Garwood, Charlie Huston, David Liss, Laurie Notaro, Arthur Phillips and Simon Rich. The free books will include excerpts from upcoming hardcover titles by each author.

Avideh Bashirrad, Random House's Deputy Director of Marketing, explained the unusual move: "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."

Last week, Galley explored the growing numbers of digital readers and interviewed Lexcycle COO Neelan Choksi.