Scribd, HarperCollins deal casts long digital shadow

Whether publishers want it or not, the Netflix model is coming to the book business.The San Francisco startup Scribd, best known as a site for posting PDFs of documents, announced Tuesday it is launching a multi-platform digital book subscription service that will provide access to a wide range of titles for $9 a month. Users can read ebooks on iOS and Android devices, as well as on Web browsers, and keep as many as 20 titles available for reading offline.Unlike other Netflix-like services that have launched recently, including Manhattan-based Oyster, Scribd is starting with thousands of titles from HarperCollins, or the majority of the publisher's backlist up until July 2012. Getting the cooperation of the so-called Big Five New York publishing houses has been the holy grail of subscription-service startups, and having even one of them represents a significant advance.More than 30 smaller publishers are also working with Scribd, including Sourcebooks, Workman and Kensington.Scribd, founded in 2007, also starts out with a high profile and an enormous user-base: It claims 80 million active readers monthly, and says that the subscription service—which soft-launched in January—has been growing by 60% every month. The company declined to provide subscriber numbers."There's never been an access model rolled out with this level of support and scale," said Trip Adler, Scribd's 29-year-old CEO and co-founder.Publishers have typically shied away from subscription services on the... Continue reading at 'Crains New York'

[ Crains New York | 2013-10-02 00:00:00 UTC ]
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US Circuit Judge Denny Chin says Google Books falls under fair use, while the Authors Guild calls it copyright infringement. Continue reading at The Christian Science Monitor

[ The Christian Science Monitor | 2013-11-15 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Argentina’s Bookstores Thrive Despite Digital Challenges

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[ Publishing Perspectives | 2013-11-15 00:00:00 UTC ]
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[ AdWeek | 2013-11-14 00:00:00 UTC ]
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[ The Bookseller | 2013-11-12 00:00:00 UTC ]
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[ Publishing Perspectives | 2013-11-12 00:00:00 UTC ]
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[ BBC News | 2013-11-12 00:00:00 UTC ]
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[ The Bookseller | 2013-11-06 00:00:00 UTC ]
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[ Publishing Executive | 2013-11-01 00:00:00 UTC ]
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[ Digiday | 2013-10-31 00:00:00 UTC ]
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HarperCollins and Foyles set to bundle

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[ The Bookseller | 2013-10-31 00:00:00 UTC ]
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HarperCollins reorganises communications team

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[ The Bookseller | 2013-10-31 00:00:00 UTC ]
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[ The Bookseller | 2013-10-30 00:00:00 UTC ]
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[ PC World | 2013-10-30 00:00:00 UTC ]
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[ The Sydney Morning Herald | 2013-10-30 00:00:00 UTC ]
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[ AllThingsD | 2013-10-29 00:00:00 UTC ]
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[ Publishing Perspectives | 2013-10-26 00:00:00 UTC ]
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[ Advertising Age | 2013-10-24 00:00:00 UTC ]
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