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HarperCollins Pursues E-Book Subscription Service With Scribd
By JULIE BOSMAN
Published: October 1, 2013

HarperCollins is the latest publisher to tinker with a Netflix-style e-book subscription service, announcing on Tuesday that it has struck a deal to make its backlist books available on Scribd, a Web site for sharing documents and books.

Scribd, with a generous base of 80 million visitors to its site each month, said it was positioned to become a prominent e-book subscription service, in which consumers pay a flat monthly fee and receive access to a large catalog of e-books in exchange.

Brian Murray, the chief executive of HarperCollins, said he was encouraged to sign on partly because of consumer interest in subscription models for music, television and radio. The idea has been circulating in publishing for years, but it has generated little traction so far. Oysterbooks.com, a venture introduced last month, offers consumers access to more than 100,000 books for a monthly fee of $9.95.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/02/bu...ribd.html?_r=0