June 10, 2009
There's more going on in digital books besides Amazon's Kindle Store
More signs that books are going digital.
This morning, major book publisher Simon & Schuster has partnered up with San Francisco startup, Scribd, to sell 5,000 books on the e-book distribution site. Simon & Schuster represents many best selling authors including Stephen King and Marry Higgins Clark.
Ellie Hirschhorn, CEO of Simon & Schuster stated on digital books, “It’s a very high growth opportunity for us…It’s growing 300% year over year, but it’s still relatively low numbers. It’s a small base with rapid growth.”
There’s several interesting elements detailed in the partnership. From NYTimes article:
- Simon & Schuster will sell books on Scribd for 20 percent off the list price.
- Scribd will give 80 percent of revenue to Simon & Schuster.
- Unlike Amazon Kindle, Scribd will allow publishers to see what its selling in order to change prices accordingly.
- Simon & Schuster will sell books with anticopying software, meaning books can be transferred to Sony’s reader, mobile phones, but not Amazon’s Kindle.
Scrib'd is soon to come out with an iPhone app that will allow users to read its library on the go. With its vision to “Liberate the word,” Scribd offers its users a place to read and upload their own written documents. iPaper, Scribd’s embeddable technology, turns PDF, Word and other text documents into its own format which is indexed during upload and can be read on the Web. This makes it easier for them to be found on search engines like Google. Currently, Scribd reaches 60 million readers per month and is sharing millions of documents in 90 languages. President Barack Obama has uploaded documents to Scribd during his campaign.
Besides the simple transformation of physical books to digitally downloadable letters, companies like Vook, which we recently published an interesting interview with, are trying to merge digital books with video and the plethora of social media jibberish on the Web. See the video here on Vator
Related Companies, Investors, and Entrepreneurs
Vook
Startup/Business
Joined Vator on
Vook was created in 2008 by Internet entrepreneur Bradley Inman, with the vision to unite the disparate worlds of books and videos into one complete, blended story.
Vook has created an innovative platform where
all forms of media come together to create a whole greater than the sum
of its parts. Vook weaves together content from incredible writers and
professionally shot and edited videos by filmmakers from TurnHere.
Vooks also enhance the community and discussion associated with reading
great books and watching great films.
You can read your book, watch videos that enhance the story and connect with authors and your friends through social media all on one screen, without switching between platforms.
Vooks are available in two formats: As a web-based application you can read on your computer and a mobile application for reading on the go.
With the web-based application you don't have to download programs or install software. Just open your favorite browser and start reading and watching in an exciting new way. You can also download and install the mobile applications through the Apple iTunes store and sync them with your Apple mobile device.
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