Scribd signs up Simon & Schuster, adds 5,000 books to its e-book site
Scribd, the upstart San Francisco publisher of online content, today added stalwart New York book publisher Simon & Schuster to its roster of partners.
The deal adds 5,000 titles to Scribd's digital books catalog. In addition, it makes available thousands of other titles for online preview. If readers like what they see, Scribd will send them to Simon & Schuster's website or other online bookstores where they can buy the paper version. Simon & Schuster, owned by CBS Corp., represents such best-selling authors as Stephen King, Mary Higgins Clark and David McCullough.
Digital books make up less than 3% of the overall book industry revenue, but the category is growing fast as readers gravitate to electronic reading devices such as Amazon's Kindle, Sony's Reader and even Apple's iPhone.
"It’s a very high growth opportunity for us," said Ellie Hirschhorn, chief digital officer and executive vice president of Simon & Schuster. "It's growing 300% year over year, but it's still relatively low numbers. It’s a small base with rapid growth."
-- Alex Pham
Trying to understand why this story is news or even interesting. This company offers pirated copies of books - like hundreds of others around the globe (check out Russia) and here's the news: "one publisher offers ebooks it offers elsewhere for a higher price than you get elsewhere" ?? If a website like scribd isn't honorable with the publishing community and published authors, why would it be honorable with its paying customers? I'm a bit confused. There are much better deals and prices at honest ebook websites like www.fictionwise.com (now owned by Barnes and Noble), www.booksonboard.com (still an independent - and the only place my friends and I have ever received good service in ebooks), Amazon (of course), Sony and others. Those companies offer a large variety of titles from big publishers and individual aspiring authors. Their prices are better and they offer tens of thousands more in popular titles. When will the news start covering the really customer-focused companies that make this work for ebook loyalists?
Posted by: Mike Zebinski | June 13, 2009 at 12:03 PM