Subscription service Scribd announced raising $58 million in equity financing from Spectrum Equity. They say the funds will be used “to continue to operate sustainably and efficiently while accelerating our growth, product innovations, content acquisition and continued investment in our employees.” Despite the raise, Scribd has said that it has been profitable since 2016 — even declaring its model “more profitable than we wanted” before going back to mostly unlimited access in early 2018. Scribd irritated a number of key partners earlier this summer among authors, agents and publishers when they launched their Snapshots program without permission, creating their own […]
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For Your Lawyers: Internet Archive’s Wikipedia Deal Raises Profile of Disputed Online Lending
Since 2010 the Internet Archive has built a massive online lending library of over 1 million titles based on a disputed (or invented, depending upon your perspective) view of copyright: They have scanned books from libraries, including a significant corpus of recent, in-copyright books, and lend the digital versions on the same one-lend-at-a-time-per-copy rule that publishers impose on ebooks that they lawfully license to library customers. The IA calls this “controlled digital lending,” which has been vigorously disputed in recent years by publishing organizations including the SFWA, the Authors Guild, and the AAP. That challenge may become more urgent now […]
Sargent Writes to Librarians with Respect, An Apology and No Change in eBook Windowing
As ALA leaders and some friends planned to visit Macmillan on Wednesday morning to drop off their petition with over 150,000 signatures objecting to the eight-week windowing of new-release ebooks to libraries that begins November 1, ceo John Sargent wrote to librarians in response to their abundant feedback. He opens, “First, I would like to apologize. It is clear to me that I should have written to all of you directly with our terms change. I meant no disrespect.” Sargent also makes clear that the company consulted with community members before finalizing its new policy: “Please know that this change […]
ALA Starts Anti-Macmillan Petition, Continues to Give Amazon A Free Pass
The American Library Association has launched a petition in which Macmillan is urged to reconsider the company’s planned eight-week windowing of all but one copy of new-release ebooks to libraries. “ALA’s goal is to send a clear message to Macmillan’s CEO John Sargent: e-book access should be neither denied nor delayed,” said ALA Executive Director Mary Ghikas in the release. We asked the ALA when they would focus their earnest efforts on the largest publisher — and indeed the largest corporation — that does outright deny patrons any access, ever, to their ebooks or digital audiobooks. That would be Amazon, […]
Inkitt Raises $16 Million in New Funding
Berlin-based Inkitt announced a $16 million Series A funding round, led by Kleiner Perkins but including participation from HV Holtzbrinck Ventures. (The company previously raised $5 million.) The new capital will help fund their expansion, which includes plans to add 10 languages in addition to English. With more funding comes ever-greater hype: Founder and ceo Ali Albazaz, Inkitt’s founder and CEO, said the mission is to build the “Disney of the 21st century.” Want more bluster? “Albazaz claims that the average writer on Galatea earns 30 to 50 times more than what would be earned via Amazon, which he calls […]
Salinger eBooks Are Released; New Works Will Take Another 5 to 7 Years
Little, Brown announced that they will release ebook editions of J.D. Salinger’s four books for the first time on August 13. His son Matt Salinger notes in the release, ‘There were few things my father loved more than the full tactile experience of reading a printed book, but he may have loved his readers more—and not just the ‘ideal private reader’ he wrote about, but all his readers. As it became clear to us that increasing numbers of readers today read only ebooks, and after I was taken severely (if also humorously) to task by a reader with a disability […]