This San Francisco company opened for business in 2007. Two years later they have millions of documents being sold by writing entrepreneurs. The big publishing companies have jumped into this also. In June of this year, Simon & Schuster announced that they would sell digital copies of their published books on Scribd.com. These are books by their top hitters: Dan Brown and Stephen King to name a couple.

Important Info

1. Be sure and read the Terms of Service and all the FAQs so you know what you’re getting into.

2. You can’t cash out until your earnings reach $100.00 in a quarter.

3. You set the price.

4. Scribd takes 20% of your earnings plus 25 cents per sale.

5. You can choose to publish in a format that prevents your work from being downloaded and subsequently pirated so that every Tom, Dick, and Harriet the purchaser knows as well as other websites will offer your work for free thus eliminating your ability to earn income as a writer from your hard work.

You select Readable in Adobe Digital Editions with DRM (Digital Rights Media). This lets the purchaser view the content in iPaper when logged into Scribd as well as allowing them to download a secured copy that is licensed to the purchaser. That secure copy can be read offline, but it must be read with free software called Adobe Digital Editions. This option gives purchasers less control over how they use the content, and disables their ability to print the work. However, those limits are offset usually by the low purchase price, and those same limits are what protect the copyright holder from unauthorized duplication.

6. If you’re the instant gratification type, you can use their Web forum to post instantly, charge for the document, and see results just as instantly.

About Scribd

They call themselves a social publishing company. Of course, I somewhat cynically think that in the Web 2.0 world, you just tack social onto anything. Voila! It’s immediately the new “in” place to gather.

They help you easily convert most files, including PDF, Word, PowerPoint and Excel, into Web documents for sharing with the rest of the planet.

You create an account and can publish instantly. Then you build a community by subscribing to people, publishers and companies with similar interests. That’s the social part of their business model.

Sure, you can browse interesting content in just about any genre. Use their search engine, and you can find just about anything. Scribd content of course is indexed by the search engines. Read the About Us page for stats and other information as well as a list of the well-known companies using them which adds to their credibility.

Takeaway Truth

There’s a publishing revolution going on. Writers who are smart business people will learn all they can in order to see how they can benefit from new technologies.