Scribd.com To Take On Amazon

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Scribd, a formerly harmless document sharing site, has dedicated itself to taking on Goliath. Scribd will challenge Amazon in the market niche it created – Kindle eBooks. Scribd is now selling eBooks and other content to Kindle users and even provides a delivery to Kindles.

Scribd offers document sharing and group-editing of text files, and is the proclaimed “YouTube of print”. They’ve started selling eBooks on their website, which allow you to view these books on the web, or, beam them to your Kindle. Amazon is the main bookseller for it’s own Kindle device, with Feedbooks and The Gutenberg Project providing free open-source books to Kindle users. No other company has attempted to circumvent Amazon at its own game.

Scribd’s boyish CEO, Trip Adler,  spoke with tech blog Gizmodo, revealing that while Scribd’s small, mostly obscure eBook selection doesn’t compare to Amazon’s monstrous Kindle Store, they were positioning themselves to compete head-to-head with them.

Scribd recently signed a deal with publisher ‘John Wiley and Sons’, which gives them access to the Frommer’s travel guides and the “For Dummies” help book selection. Scribd claims that their publishing deal is better than Amazon. Amazon reportedly splits profits 50/50 with a publisher, and they set the price. Scribd only takes 20%, and lets the publisher set their own price.

With Scribd’s profit model, they seem more attractive to publishers, although some Kindle users might not like buying their books from outside Amazon. It’s good to see competition in the Kindle space, as this could drive prices down.