Scribd’s New Digital Marketplace

I sent out a tweet about this one, but the news of Scribd’s new market place for selling digital publications is interesting enough to merit a full blog post as well, in my opinion.

For anyone not already familiar with it, Scribd has been around a while now as a “social publishing” platform – basically a place that makes it easy for anyone to upload a document so that it can easily be shared, searched for, and read by pretty much anyone with a Web browser. The company has put a lot of effort into developing its Adobe Flash-based iPaper reader to provide a consistent, high quality reading experience.

The new Scribd store now makes it possible for document publishers to name a price for their books, market and sell them through the Scribd e-commerce system, and keep 80 percent of the revenue – a far better deal than most authors get from traditional publishers. The store is already full of a wide range of titles that seem to be priced anywhere from $1 up to $25 or so.

For individuals who have or plan to publish educational content, this is yet another brick in the “potential opportunity/potential threat” wall. It may not be the avenue for your publications, but you will definitely want to take a minute to check it out.

You might also want to read or listen to the American Public Media “Marketplace” segment on Scribd and take a look at the video below: Best Selling Authors Premiere New Novels on Scribd (click through if you don’t see it).
—

—

Jeff Cobb
Hedgehog & Fox