Several times this year, I used Scribd to post my presentations on the web. It was extremely easy to use. Moreover, there were some helpful metrics (that is, the number of viewers), sharing tools and publishing options (such as PDFs, PowerPoints, etc).Well, as should be no surprise, Scribd is getting lots of traction, attracting about 60 million unique visitors.
In fact, this week the website announced a deal with Simon & Schuster -- a division of CBS (NYSE: CBS) -- to sell roughly 5,000 digital e-books. Some of the authors include Stephen King and Mary Higgins Clark.
It helps that Scribd has added content protection. For example, readers cannot print the PDFs.
While the e-book market is still relatively small, this is likely to change. After all, Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN) is seeing much success from its Kindle.
As for Scribd, the company recently launched a new program that allows authors to sell their own works – with Scribd getting 20% of the sale's price. In light of the website's huge audience, this is likely to be an easy way to pick-up revenues as well as help to grow the e-book market.
So, should Amazon be worried? Probably not. The company's audience, brand and trust are powerful.
However, Scribd will be worthy competition, which will likely mean better terms for authors.
Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including The Complete M&A Handbook
and the founder of BizEquity, a free online business valuation tool for small businesses. You can reach him at his personal blog.
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