Entries tagged with “scribd” from Tools of Change for Publishing

What Ebook Resellers Should Learn from Scribd

Andrew Savikas
July 7, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (13) | Listen

Scribd made a splash when they opened up a "Scribd Store" for selling view and download access to documents. Their terms (80% to the document publisher) are quite generous, though one reason publishers keep so much is that most of the merchandising (including pricing) is self service -- Scribd could learn a lot from other media retailers if they're interested in really promoting document sales.

But one area where existing ebook resellers could really learn from Scribd is in terms of data access and reporting. During one particularly frustrating conversation with an ebook reseller just last week, I learned that we'd be lucky to get sales reports nearly 6 weeks after any sales. These are digital sales. On the Web. Paid by credit card. No inventory to track, no shipping, no check or invoice processing.

Compare that to Scribd, where I get an email every time a document is sold telling me how much it sold for, and the total lifetime earnings for that document. I can also view a graph showing document views over time:

And every single day I get a detailed summary of document activity (this is a very small excerpt):

Here's your daily summary of what's happened with your Scribd account since 
you last checked out the site.

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      Someone liked your document entitled "Apache 2 Pocket Reference by O'Reilly Media"!     
 7 minutes ago
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      Someone liked your document entitled "JRuby Cookbook by O'Reilly Media"!        
 7 minutes ago
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      Someone liked your document entitled "Analyzing Business Data with Excel by O'Reilly Media"!    
 31 minutes ago
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Maria added your document "Tomcat: The Definitive Guide by O'Reilly Media" to their list of favorites
        
 39 minutes ago
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There's also quite a variety of reporting formats and interfaces in the wild among ebook resellers, meaning lots of time is spent by either IT staff or accounting staff (or both) parsing and processing each flavor of report. Though there is a Digital Sales Report format, I haven't heard about any reseller actually using it (if you know of one, tell me in the comments).

Success on the Web requires nearly realtime analytics, and that's one area of ebook retailing Scribd seems to really understand.

Scribd Store Sets New Standard for Ebook Ecommerce (and 650 O'Reilly Ebooks Included)

Andrew Savikas
May 17, 2009 | Permalink | Listen

There are more than 650 (DRM-free of course) O'Reilly ebooks now on sale in the new Scribd store, which officially launches Monday morning. Full details over on O'Reilly Radar:

For a publisher (and I use the term loosely) the terms for the Scribd store are impressive -- publishers set the sale price directly, and keep 80% of the revenue (compare that to Amazon's DTP program, where the standard terms are that Amazon gets to set the actual price, and the publisher only gets 35% of their "suggested" price). There's also an interesting "automated pricing" option in Scribd, which uses an (unspecified) algorithm to set the sale price. But the pieces of the Scribd store I'm most excited about is the real-time reporting (compared with a lag of a month or more with most ebook resellers, including Amazon), the option to easily provide free updates to existing content, and the variety of adjustable display options -- like preview amount, refreshingly optional DRM, and purchase-link images. Administering and understanding your sales in Scribd is downright delightful compared with the same for Kindle.

Free Ebooks with Embedded Ads Via Scribd-Lulu Partnership

Peter Brantley
July 16, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Listen

Scribd and Lulu have joined forces to combine Scribd's iPaper format, a Flash-derived viewing technology optimized for bandwidth and speed, with Lulu content. From ReadWriteWeb:

Beginning this month on the self-publishing site Lulu.com, you will soon find a broad selection of some of the site's most popular free content made available via the iPaper format ... And thanks to iPaper's ability to embed [Google] AdSense ads within the documents, content creators will now have a way to offer free e-books that also have the potential to earn them an income.

Related:

• Treating Ebooks Like Software
• Harlequin Embeds Hyperlinks in New Ebook
• Publisher Offers Tips for Embedding Web Links in Ebooks
• Author Notes Risks and Opportunities in Free Ebooks