Open Access News

News from the open access movement


Saturday, March 21, 2009

Publishers collaborating with Scribd

Jason Kincaid, Major Book Publishers Start Turning To Scribd, TechCrunch, March 17, 2009. (Thanks to Michel Bauwens.)

Online document sharing site Scribd has announced that it has partnered with a number of major publishers, including Random House, Simon & Schuster, Workman Publishing Co., Berrett-Koehler, Thomas Nelson, and Manning Publications, to legally offer some of their content to Scribd’s community free of charge. Publishers have begun to add an array of content to Scribd’s library, including full-length novels as well as briefer teaser excerpts. ...

Scribd has actually been posting both full text and excerpts of books from some of these publishers for a few months now as they conducted trial tests. The fact that they’re now publicly endorsing the platform seems to indicate that they’re pleased with the results, and I won’t be surprised if we start seeing more publishers sign on. ...