Scribd Becomes a DRM-Optional E-Bookstore 93
Miracle Jones writes "In an effort to compete with Amazon and Google, the document-hosting website Scribd will now be letting writers and publishers sell documents that they upload. They will be offering an 80/20 profit-sharing deal in favor of writers. Writers will be able to charge whatever they want. In addition, Scribd will not force any content control (although they will have a piracy database and bounce copyrighted scans) and will let writers choose to encrypt their books with DRM or not. This is big news for people in publishing, who have been seeking an alternative to Amazon for fear that Amazon is amassing too much power too quickly in this brand-new marketplace, especially after Amazon's announcement last week that they will now be publishing books as well as selling them."
Is it just me, or is Scribd Super Annoying (Score:5, Interesting)
Is it just me, or is Scribd super annoying? Often this happens to me: I'm searching for information about something. I'm clicking through Google links trying to figure out the answer to my question. I click on a promising-looking link, and then I end up on a screwed-up looking site that's basically totally unreadable. I've learned to recognize such piles of crap as scribd documents.
There's a tiny little text box taking up like 6 cm by 5 cm of space with a scrollbar... I have multiple monitors, huge space on my desktop, and they're cramming all the content into this tiny little unreadable scrollable space. After a while I figured out that I could click a couple times and turn the content into something that was somewhat usable. But generally when a search puts me into a scribd document, I just hit the back button and look elsewhere. Only in a fit of pure desperation will I return to the scribd content, but usually I don't have to.
Am I alone in feeling this way? perhaps I'm hopelessly backwards or something, but scribd annoys me greatly.
Learn from Walmart (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:USA Only = useless (Score:1, Interesting)
YUDU.com has allowed you to buy and sell documents from the very beginning and it works worldwide. It allows you to change the currency depending on how you want to pay.
It also has a better interface, IMO, and allows you to add multimedia (video, audio, Flash) to a publication as well as have others promote your publication and get paid a commission. Also, the DRM is much better.
I think the reason why many people are complaining on this forum about Scribd documents coming up in search results is because of their readability and searchability. I think too many ePublishers are simply PDF converters and are not taking full advantage of the rich experience this format can give you.
This is the way that publishing is headed, but it will have its bumps and bruises along the way.