Over the last few weeks, the online writing site Scribd has been testing Scribd Archive, “a premium feature that allows people to download certain archived content for a fee.” Readers can still access this special content online and on mobile devices for free, but the new download fee caused concern among some Scribd writers.
Scribd senior VP of marketing Tammy Nam wrote a Huffington Post essay explaining the service and showing users how to opt out of the Scribd Archive. The company also blogged about the new feature at this link.
Nam outlined the logic behind the new fees: “We launched the archive feature because, in order for us to continue building free products that content publishers and readers love, we have to be able to pay for the servers that host the documents and the engineers to maintain the site (plus everything else that keeps a company running).”
Full disclosure: Scribd helped sponsor our World’s Longest Literary Remix contest this summer.