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[booklover6]

Originally Posted by GtrsRGr8

#1 Can a person keep any of the ebooks that they've downloaded from Scribd or are they strictly loans?

You can keep them as long as you are a subscriber. But they are loans.

[Blossom]

Originally Posted by GtrsRGr8

I just noticed on another website an advertisement from Scribd offering an one month trial membership. This three month trial offer is really great! I am very tempted . . . .

It's a great deal and I am enjoying it. three months is a long time to read alot of free books.


It is easy to cancel via online. I did research about that not to mention you see the cancel button even from the site each time you go to your account settings. Of course if you pay with PayPal you can do a hard cancel through them but it's best to go to through the Scribd site and cancel first.

http://support.scribd.com/entries/21...-subscription-

[BearMountainBooks]

They are loans. And from what I understand (limited understanding here as this is all new) an author doesn't get paid unless you actually read the books. So, for example, I sampled about 3 books yesterday, reading...up to 20 percent of the one, but not reading more than 10 percent of the other two. I didn't ultimately want to continue with any. It's my understanding from what we were told as authors that unless a book reached some magic percentage, we wouldn't be paid.

I'm not sure how it all works or how they determine any of it, but I'm throwing it out there in case anyone wants the limited info I have.

[booklover6]

Originally Posted by BearMountainBooks

It's my understanding from what we were told as authors that unless a book reached some magic percentage, we wouldn't be paid.

I'm not sure how it all works or how they determine any of it, but I'm throwing it out there in case anyone wants the limited info I have.

I am curious about that, myself. How do they figure it out? I've opened multiple books to look at the formatting, and have downloaded dozens, but have only actually finished 2 or 3.

[BearMountainBooks]

Originally Posted by booklover6

I am curious about that, myself. How do they figure it out? I've opened multiple books to look at the formatting, and have downloaded dozens, but have only actually finished 2 or 3.

I'll look back through the emails, but I don't know that it was ever explained completely. I admit I wasn't paying tons of attention because I had very little expectation that the idea would take off. For some odd reason 20 percent sticks in the back of my brain, but I have a lot of author stuff to keep track of because I'm at so many retailers. I could be mixing oranges and apples. I'm pretty sure it will be on the smashword notices; I just have to find it.

I'm not entirely sure it had been hammered out in the letter I'm thinking of because we got several notices and at least one was that the deal was in the works with some "it will probably work something like this."

I'll see what I can find this weekend. I'm also curious about how the tags and genre are assigned. My humorous mystery doesn't seem to come up under a search of mystery or cozy. It's more common to see books with "Mystery" in the title showing up. And you get some oddball titles that don't appear to be mysteries at all.

I'm sure some of this is still fluctuating or being worked on, etc.

[booklover6]

Well I wish them success. I am very supportive of the model. However if they don't allow full justification as a choice, I may not buy the sub. I have emailed them my preference for this, and for additional fonts. The person said she would tell the developers.

[BearMountainBooks]

Originally Posted by booklover6

Well I wish them success. I am very supportive of the model. However if they don't allow full justification as a choice, I may not buy the sub. I have emailed them my preference for this, and for additional fonts. The person said she would tell the developers.

Their support responses seem pretty fast. I wish their black on white had blacker text. I'm finding the sepia is best for me as well.

Here's what I found about the payment and I don't know if this was final or what was being beaten about:

"Full read" credit is when a reader reads more than 20% of the book, not counting the first 10% of the book starting at page one. They also pay for partial reads, which is a cool bonus and unlike any other retailer. If a reader reads 5% beyond the 10% sample, but less than 20% beyond, you receive a "browse" credit.

I think I already mentioned that authors cannot upload directly to the sub service (which would be my preference. Not that smash does a bad job, but I have stopped publishing there for other reasons). Authors can upload directly to the "for sale" section of scribd, which may actually get some traction now that scribd has some reader eyeballs. HOWEVER if an author is with smashwords, you are basically opting to distributed to BOTH via them. So you can't get the benefit of uploading your own stuff for sale if you need Smashwords to do the sub service distribution. Not saying this is bad; it actually saves steps for the author, but just pointing it out.

I continue to be impressed with the books I see there; of course, I've actually READ a number of the more popular authors: Fluke, Tim Myers, Martha Wells (fantasy author) Shirley Rousseau Murphy, Aimee Gilchrist, Elizabeth Peters, Shirley Damsgaard and so on.

There are also some indie authors that I've had on my list but never gotten to that I can try via the service without it costing my anything. Connie Shelton (I think I may have actually read one of hers), Kaye George --oh that reminds me I think I saw Elizabeth Georges titles up there too. Oh, and I saw Lawrence Block there too.

[gabby98]

It's probably also saves Scribd from having to do any legal or moral verification work for the loaner books or at least less work lol

[Manabi]

Originally Posted by BearMountainBooks

They are loans. And from what I understand (limited understanding here as this is all new) an author doesn't get paid unless you actually read the books. So, for example, I sampled about 3 books yesterday, reading...up to 20 percent of the one, but not reading more than 10 percent of the other two. I didn't ultimately want to continue with any. It's my understanding from what we were told as authors that unless a book reached some magic percentage, we wouldn't be paid.

I'm not sure how it all works or how they determine any of it, but I'm throwing it out there in case anyone wants the limited info I have.

It's good to know that actually, I'll make sure to get to the end, even if I'm just skimming, to help out authors.

[GtrsRGr8]

Originally Posted by BearMountainBooks

They are loans. And from what I understand (limited understanding here as this is all new) an author doesn't get paid unless you actually read the books. So, for example, I sampled about 3 books yesterday, reading...up to 20 percent of the one, but not reading more than 10 percent of the other two. I didn't ultimately want to continue with any. It's my understanding from what we were told as authors that unless a book reached some magic percentage, we wouldn't be paid.

I'm not sure how it all works or how they determine any of it, but I'm throwing it out there in case anyone wants the limited info I have.

That's very interesting. I was an used book dealer for several years (I've put the business on hiatus for reasons that I won't go into here) and it was amazing to me how many used books that I ran across in thrift stores, used book sales, etc. that had apparently not been read at all (it is easy to tell with paperbacks). Something seems a little unfair not to pay an author for ebooks that are not read. But, the advent of ebooks has changed so many things . . . .

[GtrsRGr8]

Originally Posted by GtrsRGr8

I'm intrigued. I wonder if one or more of you could answer a couple of questions, though. If one or more of the questions have been covered in (a) post(s), I apologize--I didn't see them.

#1 Can a person keep any of the ebooks that they've downloaded from Scribd or are they strictly loans?
#2 Has anyone had actual experience trying to cancel a Scribd membership, trial or otherwise? I ask this because it's been my experience for some companies who offer free trial memberships to make it difficult to cancel them by burying the cancellation information--telephone number, _et al._--in fine print, etc. and, in general, giving the member a lot of "hoops" to jump through to be able to cancel his/her membership.

Thanks to all of you who answered my questions!

I'm sorry if I'm going to seem like a wet blanket, here, but I want to share one piece of information that I've learned from the little bit of research that I've done on the selection of books on Scribd. I checked out the selection of books in one of my favorite genres and noticed that many of the books are Smashwords titles. Some, if not all, are for-sale titles as opposed to free titles. However, in my opinion (I'm trying to say this in a way that will keep me from being sued, or hated by those of you who have published using Smashwords) even the for-sale titles on Smashwords are generally of a poorer quality than those published by even the small traditional publishers.

[BearMountainBooks]

Originally Posted by GtrsRGr8

Thanks to all of you who answered my questions!

I'm sorry if I'm going to seem like a wet blanket, here, but I want to share one piece of information that I've learned from the little bit of research that I've done on the selection of books on Scribd. I checked out the selection of books in one of my favorite genres and noticed that many of the books are Smashwords titles. Some, if not all, are titles for-sale titles as opposed to free titles. However, in my opinion (I'm trying to say this in a way that will keep me from being sued or hated by those of you who have published using Smashwords) even the for-sale titles on Smashwords are generally of a poorer quality than those published by even the small traditional publishers.

Don't worry, most of us are pretty realistic and we can see the same covers you do as well.

From your earlier post about getting paid--from what I can tell, SCRIBD doesn't have a sample feature--so anyone reading just 10 percent or so is really just getting a sample--that is generally free from most retailers. Amazon is about 5 percent for a free sample. Someone correct me if I have that wrong. I sample all the time, so you'd think I'd know...

There is a drop down in scrib to see the subscription only titles. I'm guessing you are seeing the entire smashwords library--which is HUGE compared to what is up for subscription. If you select "Subscription books" rather than subscription and for purchase, you might have better luck.

I found fantasy, urban fantasy and mystery to be pretty well stocked, even when I narrowed down to cozy mystery (or tried to). Someone else (Blossom?) mentioned a good romance selection. I haven't check sci/fi yet because I don't read a ton of that and I haven't checked what I call "tough guy" fiction (robert crais, Lee Childs, etc. I don't expect either of them to be there...)

[Atunah]

I do see some of what GtrsRGr8 is talking about. Even in the subscription part there is a lot of, um, bad stuff in there. The search isn't the best one so I did some workarounds to find what I want. I am concentrating on romance offerings as that is what I like reading a lot. So I started following 5 publishers that offer some of that genre, among others. Open Road Media, Kensington Books, HarperCollins, Diversion books, Sourcebooks. Then I can go there directly and look up new additions for example.

I also went down into the sub genres and scrolled and scrolled and scrolled, I wish there was a list for faster scrolling, but I just took the time. By doing that I found some great back list stuff I like reading. So if its self published, it is usually a back list title I go for that has been previously published by someone.
Since these titles are not in that select thingy on amazon, they aren't going free every month or so. I mean there would be no point in paying a subscription for titles that constantly go free anyway on amazon. At least not for me.

So far the publishers alone could keep me busy for a while. With HarperCollins having some newer stuff, and also Sourcebooks and Kensington, Open Road has some nice back list titles. I found some nice time travel titles from the 90's. An odd thing I found that an author I found in there I could add the titles to my library and read, but they aren't even available as ebooks on amazon. Just the used paperbacks out of print stuff.

By scrolling all the way down the sub genres, sorted by most recent, I was able to find authors with back lists and the publishers. I guess they were put up in batches. Its easier to find those patterns this way. And that is the way to check once in a while what was newly added to the catalog.
I have only had to set the filter to subscriptions books once, its been showing those only since. Doing a search you have to select books.

So I have spend some time sifting and making a list of names of authors and adding some to my library to see if this is something I am going to keep after the trial. So far I am happy with the selection, I just have issues with what to read the books on. So if I discontinue, it won't be because of selection, but because of lack of devices I can read on.

[BearMountainBooks]

I too am finding books that won't go free, but were actually on my list to check out. So that is a huge bonus for me.

[Joykins]

Originally Posted by booklover6

I am curious about that, myself. How do they figure it out? I've opened multiple books to look at the formatting, and have downloaded dozens, but have only actually finished 2 or 3.

The app tracks how far you have read in the document, partially so you can start from your last stopping place and sync.