Scribd /skrbd/ is a digital library and e-book and audiobook subscription service that includes one

million titles.[2][3][4][5] In addition, Scribd hosts 60 million documents on its open publishing platform. [6]
Founded in 2007 by Trip Adler, Jared Friedman, and Tikhon Bernstam, and headquartered in San
Francisco, California, the company is backed by Khosla Ventures, Y Combinator, Charles River
Ventures, and Redpoint Ventures.[7] Scribd's e-book subscription service is available
on Android and iOS smartphones and tablets, as well as the Kindle Fire, Nook, and personal
computers. Subscribers can access unlimited books from 1,000 publishers,
including Bloomsbury, Harlequin, HarperCollins,Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Lonely
Planet, Macmillan, Perseus Book Group, Simon & Schuster, Wiley, and Workman.[8][9]
Scribd has 80 million users, and has been referred to as "the Netflix for books."[10][11][12]
Contents

1History
o

1.1Founding (20072013)

1.2Subscription service (2013present)

1.3Audiobooks

1.4Comics

2Timeline

3Financials

4Technology

5Reception
o

5.1Accusations of copyright infringement

5.2Controversies

5.3BookID

6Supported file formats

7See also

8References

9External links

History[edit]
Founding (20072013)[edit]

Scribd began as a site to host and share documents.[11] While at Harvard, Trip Adler was inspired to
start Scribd after learning about the lengthy process required to publish academic papers. [13] His
father, a doctor at Stanford, was told it would take 18 months to have his medical research
published.[13] Adler wanted to create a simple way to publish and share written content online. [14] He
co-founded Scribd with Jared Friedman and attended the inaugural class of Y Combinator in the
summer of 2006.[15] There, Scribd received its initial $12,000 in seed funding and then launched in a
San Francisco apartment in March 2007.[6]
Scribd was called "the Youtube for documents," allowing anyone to self-publish on the site using its
document reader.[13] The document reader turns PDFs, Word documents, andPowerPoints into Web
documents that can be shared on any website that allows embeds. [16] In its first year, Scribd grew 218
percent with 23.5 million visitors as of November 2008. [17] It also ranked as one of the top 20 social
media sites according to Comscore.[18]
In June 2009, Scribd launched the Scribd Store, enabling writers to easily upload and sell digital
copies of their work online.[19] That same month, the site partnered with Simon & Schuster to sell ebooks on Scribd.[20] The deal made digital editions of 5,000 titles available for purchase on Scribd,
including books from bestselling authors like Stephen King,Dan Brown, and Mary Higgins Clark.[21]
In October 2009, Scribd launched its branded reader for media companies including The New York
Times, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, The Huffington Post,TechCrunch, and MediaBistro.
[22]
ProQuest began publishing dissertations and theses on Scribd in December 2009. [23] In August
2010, many notable documents hosted on Scribd began to go viral, including the
California Proposition 8 ruling, which received 6,000 views per second, and HPs lawsuit
against Mark Hurds move to Oracle.[24] [25]

Subscription service (2013present)[edit]

In October 2013, Scribd officially launched its unlimited subscription service for e-books.[26] This gave
users unlimited access to Scribds library of digital books for a flat monthly fee. [27] The company also
announced a partnership with HarperCollins which made the entire backlist of HarperCollins catalog
available on the subscription service.[28] According to Chantal Restivo-Alessi, chief digital officer
at HarperCollins, this marked the first time that the publisher has released such a large portion of its
catalog.[29] In March 2014, Scribd announced a deal with Lonely Planet, offering the travel publishers
entire library on its subscription service.[30]
In May 2014, Scribd further increased its subscription offering with 10,000 titles from Simon &
Schuster.[31] These titles included works from authors such as: Ray Bradbury, Mary Higgins
Clark, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Ernest Hemingway, Walter Isaacson, Stephen King, Chuck
Klosterman, and David McCullough.[32]

Scribd added audiobooks to its subscription service in November 2014 and comic books in February
2015.[33][34]
In February 2016, it was announced that only titles from a rotating selection of the library would be
available for unlimited reading, and subscribers would have credits to read three books and one
audiobook per month from the entire library; unused credits roll over to the next month. [35]

Audiobooks[edit]
In November 2014, Scribd added audiobooks to its subscription library.[36] Wired noted that this wa