Scribd /ˈskrɪbd/ is a digital library, e-book and audiobook subscription service that includes one million titles.

[2][3][4][5] Scribd hosts

60 million documents on its open publishing platform.[6]
Founded in 2007 by Trip Adler, Jared Friedman, and Tikhon Bernstam, and headquartered in San Francisco, California, the
company is backed by Khosla Ventures, Y Combinator, Charles River Ventures, and Redpoint Ventures.[7] Scribd's e-book
subscription service is available on Android and iOS smartphones and tablets, as well as the Kindle Fire, Nook, and personal
computers. Subscribers can access three books a month[8] from 1,000 publishers,
including Bloomsbury, Harlequin, HarperCollins, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Lonely Planet, Macmillan, Perseus Book
Group, Simon & Schuster, Wiley, and Workman.[9][10]
Scribd has 80 million users, and has been referred to as "the Netflix for books".[11][12][13]

Contents
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 1History
o 1.1Founding (2007–2013)
o 1.2Subscription service (2013–present)
o 1.3Audiobooks
o 1.4Comics
 2Timeline
 3Financials
 4Technology
 5Reception
o 5.1Accusations of copyright infringement
o 5.2Controversies
o 5.3BookID
 6Supported file formats
 7See also
 8References
 9External links

History[edit]
Founding (2007–2013)[edit]
Scribd began as a site to host and share documents.[12] While at Harvard, Trip Adler was inspired to start Scribd after learning
about the lengthy process required to publish academic papers.[14] His father, a doctor at Stanford, was told it would take 18
months to have his medical research published.[14] Adler wanted to create a simple way to publish and share written content
online.[15] He co-founded Scribd with Jared Friedman and attended the inaugural class of Y Combinator in the summer of
2006.[16] There, Scribd received its initial $120,000 in seed funding and then launched in a San Francisco apartment in March
2007.[6]
Scribd was called "the YouTube for documents", allowing anyone to self-publish on the site using its document reader.[14] The
document reader turns PDFs, Word documents, and PowerPoints into Web documents that can be shared on any website that
allows embeds.[17] In its first year, Scribd grew rapidly to 23.5 million visitors as of November 2008. [18] It also ranked as one of
the top 20 social media sites according to Comscore. [18]
In June 2009, Scribd launched the Scribd Store, enabling writers to easily upload and sell digital copies of their work
online.[19] That same month, the site partnered with Simon & Schuster to sell e-books on Scribd.[20] The deal made digital
editions of 5,000 titles available for purchase on Scribd, including books from bestselling authors like Stephen King, Dan
Brown, and Mary Higgins Clark.[21]
In October 2009, Scribd launched its branded reader for media companies including The New York Times, Los Angeles
Times, Chicago Tribune, The Huffington Post, TechCrunch, and MediaBistro.[17] ProQuest began publishing dissertations and
theses on Scribd in December 2009.[22] In August 2010, many notable documents hosted on Scribd began to go viral, including
the California Proposition 8 ruling, which received over 100,000 views in about 24 minutes, and HP's lawsuit against Mark
Hurd's move to Oracle.[23][24]

Subscription service (2013–present)[edit]

Screenshots of Scribd's subscription service

In October 2013, Scribd officially launched its unlimited subscription service for e-books.[11] This gave users unlimited access to
Scribd's library of digital books for a flat monthly fee.[11] The company also announced a partnership with HarperCollins which
made the entire backlist of HarperCollins' catalog available on the subscription service. [25] According to Chantal Restivo-Alessi,
chief digital officer at HarperCollins, this marked the first time that the publisher has released such a large portion of its
catalog.[26] In March 2014, Scribd announced a deal with Lonely Planet, offering the travel publisher's entire library on its
subscription service.[27]
In May 2014, Scribd further increased its subscription offering with 10,000 titles from Simon & Schuster.[28] These titles included
works from authors such as: Ray Bradbury, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Ernest Hemingway, Walter Isaacson, Stephen King, Chuck
Klosterman, and David McCullough.[29]
Scribd added audiobooks to its subscription service in November 2014 and comic books in February 2015.[4][30]
In February 2016, it was announced that only titles from a rotating selection of the library would be available for unlimited
reading, and subscribers would have credits to read three books and one audiobook per month from the entire library; unused
credits roll over to the next month.[31]

Audiobooks[edit]
In November 2014, Scribd added audiobooks to its subscription library.[32] Wired noted that this was the first subscription service
to offer unlimited access to audiobooks, and "it represents a much larger shift in the way digital content is consumed over the
net."[33] In April 2015, the company expanded its audiobook catalog in a deal with Penguin Random House.[34] This added 9,000
audiobooks to its platform including titles from authors like Lena Dunham, John Grisham, Gillian Flynn, and George R.R.
Martin.[35]

Comics[edit]
In February 2015, Scribd introduced comics to its subscription service.[36] The company added 10,000 comics and graphic
novels from publishers including Marvel, Archie, Boom! Studios, Dynamite, IDW, and Valiant.[30] These included series such
as Guardians of the Galaxy, Daredevil, X-O Manowar, and The Avengers.[37][38] However, in December 2016, comics were
eliminated from the service due to low demand.

Timeline