Does Simon & Schuster's Scribd deal challenge the Kindle?

Publisher Simon & Schuster is set to announce a partnership with electronic book purveyor Scribd today, according to a report in the New York Times. The publisher will make books by Stephen King, Dan Brown and about 5,000 others available through Scribd in e-book format for the Sony Reader, other devices and viewing online. But Scribd e-books are not made for the Kindle.

E-books are still a small share of the market: In April, sales were about $12 million, compared with more than $200 million for adult hardcovers and paperbacks. But e-book sales are bound to increase, perhaps significantly, and these days are coming to be increasingly seen as the stake your claim / land grab / run for the hills period on the e-book frontier.

In that wild landscape, Amazon's Kindle has dominated.

But it may not be the ideal e-reader choice for publishers. Amazon's format is proprietary -- it doesn't move to other e-readers (Scribd's does) -- and Amazon maintains control over prices and the percentage of profits publishers will take away. The online bookseller reportedly shares only about half of the profits with publishers -- while Scribd will keep just 20%.

Simon & Schuster's announcement gives more oomph to a player other than Amazon, to a format that can work on multiple non-Kindle readers. And this format, which has sparked exhaustive industry discussions about piracy, has not been fully embraced by a major publisher before.

“We are interested in getting our books in front of consumers in as many formats and distribution platforms as possible,” Ellie Hirschhorn, chief digital officer of Simon & Schuster, told the New York Times. So far, their books are available for the Kindle, too.

Is Simon & Schuster making a significant move against Amazon? Or is it just hoping to utilize more delivery networks for its books?

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: A Kindle. Credit: jblyberg via Flickr

Comments

[Matt]

Yes, it does. I plan on spending money on S&S's e-books (and soon) - I like the idea of supporting the open format and a competitive marketplace.

[Oliver Latsch]

As a literary agent I was intrigued by the news and I immediately proceeded to check the S&S store on Scribd. I had never used Scribd before and I am very much taken aback by how complex it is to initially get everything installed so that you can read a book.
I had to
- purchase the book
- find out how to download the book
- figure out that I needed that strange Adobe software.
- after installing that, I had to get an adobe online ID (since I would like to read my purchase on more than one device).
I use computers and downloads all the time, and I had trouble figuring out the Scribd procedures. I see no future there, expecially if compared to the Kindle or other online download stores.