February Scribd Selects? Are there any?

[Bookworm_Girl]

This news is great for me. The throttling approach is better than the credits because it prevents a few people with excessive usage from limiting the experience for everyone. And, they are keeping the price at $8.99 per month. I'd even be willing to pay more. I didn't find the credit system that limiting except for audiobooks.

The article says that the super-users were reading 100 books a month on the previous unlimited system. The article is very open that the issues were with romance, mysteries and young adult. You were allowed to accumulate 3 audiobook and 9 book credits on the credit system, and there was still a "free zero credit" catalog (which was not just public domain). I would hope the throttling calculation is something equal or greater than those numbers. The FAQs say they will send a warning about your monthly usage. and you can contact support for assistance if you think you aren't an abuser and they will evaluate your case.

[Atunah]

I don't believe for a second that there are lots of readers reading 100 full books a month. Romance or otherwise. I don't believe anything they say anymore. I am a big romance reader, among other genres, I know a lot of romance readers, real life and online. I have never met anyone that reads 100 full books a month. Not one.

I follow a lot of folks on goodreads and see their reading per year with the challenge. Those that read 300-400 books a year are a few and they are very heavy readers. Even those wouldn't be able to physically read 100 a month.

Anyone that reads more than 4 books a month is costing them money, considering the payout they have to do per book to the publisher.

Again, they just need to be honest about it up front and not continue to blame certain readers for taking them up on their service. Either its unlimited or its not. This punishing of readers and making them feel like garbage for it is disgusting. That is what really turned me off most of them. They treated their paying consumers like garbage. Just say what the number is each month you can't read over and be done with. If its 10 its 10, if its 20 its that. This secrecy so they can then throttle at will is belittling.

I don't even have any issues if they had a number. I said it back when I still had a subscription, before they yanked the romance. Just say you can read up to 20 full books a month. Not public domain stuff, regular normal published books. Or make it tiered. 10 books a month this much, 20 books a month this much. Or 30 a month for seriously heavy readers. None of this secret club crap.

I am sensing they are on their last leg. They lost a large chunk of their paying customer base back when.

[booklover6]

I agree that it seems like a last ditch effort.

100 books a month is not possible, even for me, and I read/listen to over 300 a year. Perhaps they were counting partial reads.

I want to know the number. I would also be happy to have a defined limit, rather than an undetermined unlimited until....

Since Audible started their unlimited program, I listened to 17 in November, 25 in December, and 15 in January. Granted, some of these were 4 hours! But I have been very, very pleased so far. In the middle of my 4th this month.

That's why I want a number from Scribd. No reply yet on Twitter. I will contact them via the website next.

[Bookworm_Girl]

I think that's the point. There weren't lots of users reading 100 books or more. There were a small amount of users reading at those quantities which caused the catalogs to be limited for everyone. What I find more interesting is that 8% of their users will be affected. That sounds higher than I expected.

I would be ok with tiered prices. The content that I read in January would have cost me $65 to purchase so I am getting value out of my subscription.

The Fast Company article says their subscriber base is growing and profitable.

In the past year, it's grown subscribers by over 40% to 700,000 (still well behind Kindle Unlimited's estimated 2.5 million-plus) and has started making a steady monthly profit.

In May 2017 they were reporting 500,000 subscribers and $50M revenue run rate in an article by Nieman Lab.
http://www.niemanlab.org/2017/05/scr...-and-now-news/

The verdict is still out on whether a book subscription service can survive in the long term, but I don't mind that the company makes periodic changes in the pursuit to be sustainable. I want them to survive.

[jhowell]

I have a feeling that they will treat anything more than a book a week as excessive.

They want the sort of customers who think they should be reading books, but never actually find the time to do so. Just like the gyms that rely on people signing up, but not showing up.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Atunah

I don't believe for a second that there are lots of readers reading 100 full books a month. Romance or otherwise. I don't believe anything they say anymore. I am a big romance reader, among other genres, I know a lot of romance readers, real life and online. I have never met anyone that reads 100 full books a month. Not one.

If nothing else, I suspect there would be few months in which I could find 100 books I would want to read. Even if I managed to find 100 books per month on an ongoing basis, distractions such as life and work would get in the way of spending 150-200 hours reading each month.

[JSWolf]

How can this be called unlimited when it's not unlimited? It's like T-Mobile giving unlimited 4G but throttling the data speed once you exceed 5GB. False advertising and sleezey. Scribed needs to call it what it is. Limited with restrictions.

[jhowell]

Since they control the reading app they could make it work just like cellular carrier "unlimited" plans, throttling you to one page turn every ten minutes once you exceed your monthly allotment.