Bucking a spate of trend pieces about piracy and digital texts, Simon & Schuster has reached an agreement to sell e-books in the online reading site, Scribd. They will sell 5,000 titles in all, from authors like Stephen King, Dan Brown, Mary Higgins Clark, and Chelsea Handler.
The books can be browsed and purchased at this link. Scribd counts 60 million readers, and the Scribd Store allows vendors to pick prices, and current offerings include a $1 for a graphic novel and a $5,000 market research report about China. The company allows publishers to choose how works are read, including settings for “read only on Scribd.com,” “download,” and “download with DRM.”
Trip Adler, the CEO and founder of Scribd, had this statement: “Simon & Schuster is a major force in book publishing and is again leading the industry by recognizing the power of the social web to influence reading and buying behavior … We’re thrilled to offer our users a one-stop solution for discovering, sharing and buying written works of all kind, including bestselling books by one of the world’s top publishers.”