In Praise of Scribd

The new week starts in lean forward mode. The weekend is for leaning back and just accepting whatthe Sunday Newspaper has to tell us. Digesting food may take longer than usual and there is timefor a walk in the sunshine. But then you realise that some things in the papers make no sense at all.http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/apr/05/google-internet-piracyHenry Porter writes a normal sort of opinion for a print journalist about the dangers of Google for copyright. "Google is just an amoral menace". Then he turns on Scridb as apparently another one of the "worldwide monopolies that sweep all before them with exuberant contempt for people's rights,their property and the past."It is true that Scribd offers free downloads of documents for 55 million readers. Whether publishersare taking more action than usual to remove texts from the list is disputed. The main newsdevelopment that Porter fails to mention is that book publishers including Random House andSimon & Schuster have agreed with Scribd to post promotional extracts from their titles as part of the Scribd resource.http://www.scribd.com/doc/13408222/Scribd-Partners-with-Major-Publishers-to-Bring-Books-Exclusive-Content-to-Community-of-50-MillionMy guess, and this is obviously speculation, is that UK publishers are less keen on the global potential of the Web. They may prefer the protection of regional copyright deals. Look out for announcements of Scribd deals with publishers mainly based in London.I have been posting documents to Scribd for about a year and welcome the response. .I have donesome papers for academic confernces from a practitioner point of view. One about ISO 9000 hashad almost 1,500 views and one about Dr Deming is approaching 5,000. Most of the comments are positive.http://www.scribd.com/people/documents/320482The design of the website is easy to use. They use Flash for display from any source such as Wordor PDF. It loads very quickly compared to launching Word or Acrobat from a browser. The designis not Flash as in Adobe however. The Adobe websites now always feature something animated or load a video whether requested or not. Flash is forced on you all the time. The Scribd site seems to be designed by people who like text documents and classic page layout.Scribd claims to be the "largest social publishing website". This social aspect allows for groups andcollaboration as on a music site. My paper on ISO 9000 has been added to a couple of MBA studygroups where I can find other material.http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/apr/06/cambridge-university-press-jobsThe Guardian today has a story about Cambridge University Press. My guess is that there is more of a Web strategy than appears from this report of the difficulties for litho printing. Problems includethe development that "academics who used to rely on hardback books to help climb the career ladder have more recently been turning to the kind of self-publishing and free distribution offered bythe internet."