Smashwords is now distributing to Scribd

[John Carroll]

This is awesome news! I've used Scribd a little bit, but stopped because I have limited time to tend to all the channels possible. Distributing to them through Smashwords makes me very happy, almost fuzzy even.

I'm also thrilled about the 1 year subscription! Wow!

http://blog.smashwords.com/2013/12/s...agreement.html

The meat of the agreement for authors:

For Scribd’s retail store, the terms are identical to our standard retail agreements. Smashwords authors and publishers will set the price, there will be no discounting, and authors will earn 60% of the list price on all sales. The first 10% of the book, from the cover image forward, will be the free preview sample, similar to most retailers.

For Scribd’s subscription ebook service, authors will earn 60% of the list price on all qualifying reads, and here they’ve added a cool twist. With subscription services, the author or publisher earns credit for a full read when the reader reaches a certain trigger point, measured by the percentage of the book that is read. The first 10% of the book is a free sample, similar to a retailer. Excluding the sample, once the reader reads an additional 20% of the book, a full sale is triggered and the Smashwords author earns 60% of the list price, up to a maximum of about $12.50 per read. In practice, what this means for most fiction writers is that after the reader reads more than the first 30% of your book, it triggers a full sale. For some non-fiction writers, where your book’s content is more likely to be read non-sequentially, it means if the reader starts their reading deeper in the book at Chapter 10, a sale could be triggered after reading only 20% of the book (As an aside, this underscores the importance of authors building fully functional navigation into their ebooks so that all their book's content is easily discoverable. To learn how to upgrade your ebook's navigation, check out my recent blog post and video, How to Add Navigation to a Smashwords Ebook).

Unlike any other subscription service or retailer, Scribd has sweetened the pot by added a secondary sales trigger for the author by providing credit for partial reads. If the subscriber reads 5% more than the first free 10% but less than the additional 20% necessary to generate a full sale, this triggers a credit for partial read. For every ten partial reads, which Scribd calls a “browse,” the author earns credit for a full sale. Since most people read fiction from page one forward, this means if 10 people read just over the first 15% of your book but less than 30%, it’ll generate a full sale. For non-fiction, where readers are more likely to read non-sequentially, they can read 5% of the middle of the book and trigger a browse credit.

[Anna Drake]

John, I am so with you! I'm really stoked over this. Kudos to Smashwords!

[John Carroll]

Mark and Scribd addressed the concerns some had about piracy on Scribd:

December 21 Update on Piracy Prevention: By distributing your book to Scribd via Smashwords, you'll also help prevent and remove unauthorized versions of your work at Scribd. To protect the intellectual property of authors and publishers, Scribd has developed and is continuing to enhance a Copyright Management System (CMS) that takes a digital fingerprint of all authorized uploads from Smashwords, and will use the Smashwords version as the authorized version of record. So not only will the Scribd CMS help protect Smashwords authors against unauthorized uploads in the future, it will also trigger retroactive and automated takedowns of unauthorized versions. If you ever discover an unauthorized version of your work at Scribd, visit the the Scribd DMCA takedown page and provide them a direct hyperlink to the offender's upload.