What do you think about Scribd?

[GERGE]

At first, I was thinking it was worthless. Only 3 ebooks and 1 audiobook per month?

But apparently their selection is much bigger than I thought, and I managed to find more than half of my wishlist available. And Scribd's monthly payment is less expensive than what I would have paid for some of those books, and it is available in my local currency in iTunes.

I tried Kindle Unlimited and other similar services first but selection was bad. Scribd seems much better, even it it is 3 books a month. Also, books are yours forever (well, as long as Scribd will be around), even if you stop paying.

Their reader isn't bad either. A high-ppi tablet is a must, but I do have one. Their web reader is good too, there is a scrolling mode.

Needless to say, I will remain a member. I listened to Sleeping Giants a bit and started reading Three Parts Dead today. Both more expensive than the Scripd.

I think you should check it.

[ApK]

Originally Posted by GERGE

Also, books are yours forever (well, as long as Scribd will be around), even if you stop paying.

Are you sure about that? Is that documented somewhere?

[AnemicOak]

Originally Posted by GERGE

Also, books are yours forever (well, as long as Scribd will be around), even if you stop paying.

If so this is something new and doesn't fit their business model at all. Unless you're referring to the books you buy separately through them for an extra fee? I could see retaining access to them since you're buying them outside of your monthly subscription.

For the monthly subscription you'll find that books come and go. I know I canceled after one of the times they purged thousands of titles when most of my TBR list were removed from the service. Once canceled you don't retain access to anything, or at least you didn't then.

[booklover6]

Former user....when it was unlimited. I used it mainly for the unlimited audio books. When they limited, I left.

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by GERGE

Also, books are yours forever (well, as long as Scribd will be around), even if you stop paying.

From their help page on membership cancellation:

We keep your premium membership active up until the time that you’ve paid for. For example, if you’re charged and cancel the next day, you'll still get to enjoy the rest of the month reading all that's available in our premium collection until that month is over. After that, your account will revert to a free profile on Scribd. You won't have access to the titles available only with a membership, and you will no longer have access to any remaining Monthly Reads you had not used, but you'll still be able to enjoy all our free features!

So, yours forever (as long as you keep paying forever!)



Also, they have a new promotion:

Invite friends and read for free

Invite friends to join and we'll start them off with 2 months of reading.
You'll earn one free month for every friend who joins.

[Bookworm_Girl]

I really like Scribd. I mostly read their books on my iPad Mini and iPhone. You are allowed to roll over your monthly credits up to 9 ebooks and 3 audiobooks. Their "Scribd Selects" program for zero credits each month is so good that I'm finding I don't use all of my credits! So far this year I've read $295 worth of books. That's a much larger savings than the subscription cost. I don't re-read so I don't care if I lose access to the books if I cancel or if they shut down.

Their FAQs say that if you stop the service and then decide to reactivate your account that they will restore your previous history.

[GERGE]

Yes, it seems I misread. You can only read the books as long as you are a paying member. I kinda thought they were like Audible at first.

Bu it still seems good for me.

Scribd Selects aren't really interested me, but they change every month.

I have noticed the invitation program, but don't really like to advertise something I really liked then giving a referral. It takes away all the sincerity. As I am a somewhat regular member here, people might not think that bad of me, but I still won't do it =)

[Sweetpea]

I was looking at it some time ago, but decided against it. Their claim "Read on any device" isn't true for me, none of my devices are supported (various e-readers, including an Android reader, a tablet and a phone).

[GERGE]

After using Scribd for 3 months, let me update the topic with a small review.

First I will say that I have been really happy with my subscription. My local monthly price in iTunes is TL20, which ends up being between $5-6 depending on the day's rate. For that I get 3 ebooks and 1 audiobook.

Let's get audiobooks out of the way first. Audiobook segment is in no way limited. It has, for example, all the Malazan books. It even has new releases like Rogue One. It offers many popular audiobooks in their day of release. It is not as extensive as Audible, of course, but still very extensive.

E-books are much more limited, but still very extensive if you compare it to services like Kindle Unlimited. You can check the library yourself, the first month is free. But I could say that I managed to find many books I wanted to read as I also discovered many good books. It recommends to you depending on what you have read so far and recommendations are surprisingly accurate.

You could consider Scribd as an inexpensive library (at least with Turkey pricing, it is $7.99 in USA) from which you can borrow 4 books in one month. Also, credits survive to the next months to a maximum of 9 credits.

Archive is good, probably better that you would have expected. I used all my credits so far and managed to read books unavailable in Kindle Unlimited. Scribd ended up being much much cheaper compared to buying them outright, especially with audiobooks.

This month I am reading Titan, Loteria and Star Trek: New Frontiers.

So, it is indeed much closer to a real library. You are limited with how much you can borrow each month, but what you borrow stays with you as long as you keep paying.

There is also a limited and free selection, under Scribd Selects name. It changes monthly, but you can read as much as you want. I don't know many of the books there, but this month I have read The Ocean at the End of the Lane and Little, Big. I wanted to read both of them for a while now, so it isn't that bad. Selection is nice. There is a Scribd Selects for audiobooks too, but I have never used it.

There is also magazines. But they are different from what you recognize as magazines. TIME, People, Bloomberg... You can read the last issue without using any credits, but article by article; not like a classic magazine. Like this.

There is also an extensive library of sheet music from classics to pop. All free.

Now, technical details.

I read on my iPad, and reader is passable. It isn't that customizable, but has nice typefaces with managable sizes. Not being able to modify margins and line-spacings is an issue, but they have good defaults for them. I don't really mind this on iPad, but could be a problem on smaller screens.

There are 6 typefaces. Nothing with a known name but covers all popular styles well. One oldstyle serif, one modern serif, one slab serif, one latin serif, one geometric sans and one humanist sans.

There is hyphenation, but you can also set the justification. Colors are also limited; sepia, classic black-on-white and night mode. But you can set the colors within their classes, a little darker white, a little grayer black, or a little redder sepia. You do this by something similar to a bar controller, so you are free to set it as you like. There is also a build-in brightness controller.

Bookmarks, notes and offline reading are all available.

Library is easy to browse. There are clear cut genres, with a great many sub-genres. There are also thematic selection that always change like Dark & Broody, Relaxing, Space Exploration and such. You can also preview both the books and audiobooks, sometimes up to a 100 pages or 2 hours of audio.

In the end, I recommend them. It is well worth the price. This might just be me, but having a nice library-like service, especially in a country where I don't have access to a English library, is very nice. Those of you who lives in English speaking counties might not get that much use out of this, but otherwise it is great. Really great.

[Bookworm_Girl]

Thanks for returning to share your thoughts. Great review! I still enjoy my Scribd subscription. I've had it for a year and before that I used Oyster. It is worth the money for me. It seems not too many people use it around this forum, especially once they reduced the number of romance books available and switched to a credit system. Kindle Unlimited is more popular, but the selection doesn't appeal to me. The books on Scribd are more to my tastes.

[Atunah]

Glad it works so well for you GERDE. Great review.

I cancelled Scribd around the time when they basically deleted 99.99 % of books I had in my wishlist. It was just all gone. I liked it ok to that point. My gripe wasn't so much about the selection at the time, which was great, but the fact that I had to read on a tablet. Which is just really bad for me. So I got a 2 year subscription to KU on sale and a 3rd out of state library card. So now I can basically read the same stuff that is on Scribd via my library and a readable kindle screen and get some other stuff through KU.

I think its a matter what one reads with Scribd now. I don't do audiobooks so that credit would be wasted for me.

If they have the genres you read and one likes audio, I can see it being of good value.

[NickyWithNook]

Scribd has gone through a few things. First, they had tons of selection and you could read as many books as you wanted. Then, their selection went down a bit. Now you can only have three of their better books a month, but they have a better selection.

I have joined, and quit, and re-joined. Overall I like it. I have my three picks, plus they have some Scribd Selections options - which often are really good. And then they have a selection of books that you can read as many as you want of, but aren't as good. It seems worth it to me, although you do have to watch out. Sometimes a book will only be 99 cents on Amazon, and I wouldn't want to use one of my three monthly picks on that.

I also wish I could trade the audiobook credit for a regular book. I don't listen to audiobooks.

[elaysee]

I went in to Scribd today to look through the April Selects choices - the entries you can read in April without counting against your monthly susbcription. The Selects group has looked subtly scaled back from time to time in previous months, but this time the cut-back seemed more dramatic to me - I noticed many fewer genre fiction choices, with fewer from major publishers, for instance.

They've gussied things up by creating new subgenres and listing books in as many of them as might apply, but I can only assume they're spending less on these entries.

I've gotten my money's worth out of the subscription model so far, but I've always figured it'll be a race whether Scribd shuts down before it loses too many features to be worthwhile to me. At first glance, I'll still find Selects books to read this month, but this feels like one step closer to the end. (And then I can make more headway on my TBR pile, right? )

[ottdmk]

I signed up for a three month free trial through Groupon, but never really got into using it. So today I cancelled it.

[Blossom]

I am thinking Scribd customer support is non-existent. I've had a ticket open for 4 days now on a time sensitive matter and not a peep from them.

Sent from my XT1528