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Scribd, Inc.

Type of business

Private

Available in

English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Indonesian Malay

Founded

March 2007; 12 years ago

Headquarters

San Francisco, California, US

Key people

Trip Adler

(co-founder and CEO)

Jared Friedman

(co-founder and CTO)

Tikhon Bernstam

(co-founder and COO)

Services

Social reading and publishing platform

Website

Scribd.com

Alexa rank

169 (As of 7 June 2019)[1]

Current status
Active

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 unlimited 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

History

1.1

Founding (2007–2013)

1.2

Subscription service (2013–present)

1.3

Audiobooks

1.4

Comics

Timeline

Financials

Technology

Reception
5.1

Accusations of copyright infringement

5.2

Controversies

5.3

BookID

Supported file formats

See also

References

External 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]

Scribd's unlimited service launched on February 6, 2018, and includes access to an unlimited number of
books and audiobooks, alongside unlimited access to news, magazines, documents, and sheet
music,[32] for a monthly subscription fee of US$8.99.[33] However, under this unlimited service, Scribd
will "occasionally [...] limit the titles that [members are] able to access within a specific content library in
a 30-day period."[34] The previous credit system for books and audiobooks was removed.[32]

In October 2018, Scribd announced a joint subscription to Scribd and The New York Times for $12.99 per
month.

Audiobooks[edit]

In November 2014, Scribd added audiobooks to its subscription library.[35] 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."[36] In April 2015, the company expanded its
audiobook catalog in a deal with Penguin Random House.[37] This added 9,000 audiobooks to its
platform including titles from authors like Lena Dunham, John Grisham, Gillian Flynn, and George R.R.
Martin.[38]
Comics[edit]

In February 2015, Scribd introduced comics to its subscription service.[39] 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.[40][41] However, in December 2016, comics were eliminated from the service due to low
demand.

Timeline[edit]

In February 2010, Scribd unveiled its first mobile plans for e-readers and smartphones.[42] In April 2010
Scribd launched a new feature called "Readcast",[43] which allows automatic sharing of documents on
Facebook and Twitter.[44] Also in April 2010, Scribd announced its integration of Facebook social plug-
ins at the Facebook f8 Developer Conference.[45]

Scribd rolled out a redesign on September 13, 2010 to become, according to TechCrunch, "the social
network for reading".[46]

In October 2013, Scribd launched its e-book subscription service, allowing readers to pay a flat monthly
fee in exchange for unlimited access to all of Scribd's book titles.[47]

Financials[edit]

The company was initially funded with US$120,000 from Y Combinator in 2006, and received over
US$3.7 million in June 2007 from Redpoint Ventures and The Kinsey Hills Group.[48][7] In December
2008, the company raised US$9 million in a second round of funding led by Charles River Ventures with
re-investment from Redpoint Ventures and Kinsey Hills Group.[49] David O. Sacks, former PayPal COO
and founder of Yammer and Geni, joined Scribd's board of directors in January 2010.[50]

In January 2011, Scribd raised an additional US$13 million in a round led by MLC Investments of
Australia and SVB Capital.[51] In January 2015, the company raised US$22 million in new funding from
Khosla Ventures with partner Keith Rabois joining the Scribd board of directors.[52]

Technology[edit]

In July 2008, Scribd began using iPaper, a rich document format similar to PDF built for the web, which
allows users to embed documents into a web page.[53] iPaper was built with Adobe Flash, allowing it to
be viewed the same across different operating systems (Windows, Mac OS, and Linux) without
conversion, as long as the reader has Flash installed (although Scribd has announced non-Flash support
for the iPhone).[54] All major document types can be formatted into iPaper including Word docs,
PowerPoint presentations, PDFs, OpenDocument documents, OpenOffice.org XML documents, and
PostScript files.

All iPaper documents are hosted on Scribd. Scribd allows published documents to either be private or
open to the larger Scribd community. The iPaper document viewer is also embeddable in any website or
blog, making it simple to embed documents in their original layout regardless of file format. Scribd
iPaper required Flash cookies to be enabled, which is the default setting in Flash.[55]

On May 5, 2010, Scribd announced that they would be converting the entire site to HTML5 at the Web
2.0 Conference in San Francisco.[56] TechCrunch reported that Scribd is migrating away from Flash to
HTML5. "Scribd co-founder and chief technology officer Jared Friedman tells me: 'We are scrapping
three years of Flash development and betting the company on HTML5 because we believe HTML5 is a
dramatically better reading experience than Flash. Now any document can become a Web
page.'"[57][58]

Scribd has its own API to integrate external/third-party applications,[59] but is no longer offering new
API accounts.[60]

Since 2010, Scribd has been available on mobile phones and e-readers, in addition to personal
computers. As of December 2013, Scribd became available on app stores and various mobile
devices.[citation needed]

Reception[edit]

Scribd has been praised by several newspapers and magazines, including The New York Times, Fast
Company, Forbes, and The Wall Street Journal.[61] The company has been dubbed the "Netflix for e-
books"[11] by Wired, and is a known pioneer of the "all-you-can-read" model for e-books.[13] Its
founders, Trip Adler and Jared Friedman, have been named to Forbes 30 Under 30 and Inc. 35 Under
35.[62][14]

In April 2015, Los Angeles favorably reviewed Scribd's subscription service by saying, "Subscribing to
Scribd is sort of like shopping at Trader Joes: you may not find every product you want, but it sure as hell
is convenient, inexpensive, and downright delectable."[63] Scribd has grown to more than 100 million
users in 75 countries who use the site on a monthly basis.[64] As of June 2015, the Scribd app has been
downloaded 5.7 million times on Android and 3.3 million times on iOS.[65]

Accusations of copyright infringement[edit]

Scribd has been accused of copyright infringement. In September 2009, American author Elaine Scott
alleged that Scribd "shamelessly profits from the stolen copyrighted works of innumerable authors".[66]
Her attorneys sought class action status in their efforts to win damages from Scribd for allegedly
"egregious copyright infringement" and accused it of calculated copyright infringement for
profit.[67][68][69] The suit was dropped in July 2010.[70][71]

In 2007, one year after its inception, Scribd was served with 25 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)
takedown notices.[72]

The Guardian writes, "Harry Potter author [J.K. Rowling] is among writers shocked to discover their
books available as free downloads. Neil Blair, Rowling's lawyer, said the Harry Potter downloads were
'unauthorised and unlawful'...Rowling's novels aren't the only ones to be available from Scribd. A quick
search throws up novels from Salman Rushdie, Ian McEwan, Jeffrey Archer, Ken Follett, Philippa
Gregory, and JRR Tolkien."[73]

Controversies[edit]

In March 2009, the passwords of several Comcast customers were leaked on Scribd. The passwords
were later removed when the news was published by The New York Times.[74][75][76]

In July 2010, GigaOM reported that the script of The Social Network (2010) movie was uploaded and
leaked on Scribd; it was promptly taken down per Sony's DMCA request.[77]
Following a decision of the Istanbul 12th Criminal Court of Peace, dated 8 March 2013, access to Scribd
is blocked for Internet users in Turkey.[78]

In July 2014, Scribd was sued by Disability Rights Advocates, on behalf of the National Federation of the
Blind and a blind Vermont resident, for allegedly failing to provide access to blind readers, in violation of
the Americans with Disability Act.[79] Scribd moved to dismiss, arguing that the ADA only applied to
physical locations. In March 2015, the U.S. District Court of Vermont ruled that the ADA covered online
businesses as well. A settlement agreement was reached, with Scribd agreeing to provide content
accessible to blind readers by the end of 2017.[80]

BookID[edit]

To counteract the uploading of unauthorized content, Scribd created BookID, an automated copyright
protection system that helps authors and publishers identify unauthorized use of their works on
Scribd.[81] This technology works by analyzing documents for semantic data, meta data, images, and
other elements and creates an encoded "fingerprint" of the copyrighted work.[82] BookID allows
authors and publishers protect their content on the Scribd platform.[83][better source needed]