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Scribd CEO Reportedly in New Funding Round, Trying to Finance Advances for Publishers

scribd[1]BEA 2014 kicked off today in NYC, but Scribd CEO Trip Adler isn’t there, meeting with publishers.

Pando Daily reports that Mr Adler is at a different conference in California where he is meeting with investors and trying to raise funds for expansion:

According to extremely well-placed sources, CEO Trip Adler is making it widely (and loudly) known that the primary purpose of his trip to Kara Swisher’s CODE conference is to find willing investors to help Scribd get to the next level.

We’re told Adler is attempting to raise cash for a very specific purpose: To pay hefty guarantees to publishers wary of license their intellectual property to book rental services. Sources tell us that many publishers are holding back their books unless they are guaranteed a certain amount of royalty cash.

In other words, rather than building their own services, the famously Luddite publishing industry is  letting Scribd, Oyster et al take all the risk (and raise all the cash), safe in the knowledge that those services can’t exist without licensing popular books. And so Scribd’s CEO is reportedly roaming the halls of CODE looking for someone to pay the ransom.

Leaving aside Pando’s hyperbole, I think they probably have their facts correct. I can’t find any indication that Adler is in NYC, and it is entirely plausible that he needs to raise more funding.

Update: Scribd confirmed that Adler is flying in today.

But bribes? That part, however colorful, can be ignored. I don’t think these payments to publishers are bribes, not when they are more likely advances against royalties.

Scribd currently carries around 400,000 titles, but so far they have only scored deals with 2 of the major trade publishers (HarperCollins and S&S). Scribd’s next target (aside from Perseus Book Group, which is being announced tomorrow) could be holding out for an advance.

Yes, I can believe that publishers are asking for upfront payments, and that Adler is raising the funds to pay the advances. It makes a fair amount of sense from the viewpoint of publishers to request an advance; this is an untried business model (and if the advance never earns out, the publisher can pocket the excess).

As Mike Shatzkin pointed out yesterday, we still don’t know whether the economics of Scribd and Oyster’s pay-per-loan business model will work in the long run:

I’m sure Scribd and Oyster have data and analytical skills that I don’t have. But, intuitively, this seems like a tough proposition. Subscription services are attractive to consumers because they’re bargains. If you normally read a single ebook or month or fewer, the $8.99 monthly subscription charge would not seem attractive. But if you read an ebook or two a month or more, the services will likely lose money on you.

I am keeping my fingers crossed, but even I think the viability of subscription ebooks has yet to be decided, so I can’t blame publishers for being cautious.

Unfortunately, the question of viability might never be answered, not of Scribd can’t raise more funding.

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Comments


Maria (BearMountainBooks) May 28, 2014 um 10:39 pm

I’m reading more on Scribd than I thought I would. There are actually a lot of books on there and several were on my "sample" list. The thing about sampling on kindle is that sometimes the sample is too short to really know whether I’ll like it. With scribd, I sample to my heart’s content and I’ve been able to knock about 15 books off my wishlist (that’s pretty average for me when sampling). I’ve read 80 percent of one before just tossing it aside. It was very good to start and just kept wandering further and further from a viable plot. The last one I found was an absolute gem of a mystery. I probably would not have bought it based on the sample because I was on the fence. But I kept reading…

Scibd needs to make improvements. There needs to be a way I can borrow directly to my kindle like a library book. I didn’t like reading online. Their text needs to be darker for online reading, but ultimately they need to figure out how to let me read on my kindle–and how to let others read on their dedicated e-readers.

Honestly there are enough known name authors on there now to keep a person satisfied for quite some time. There’s a good mix of known and unknown and plenty to choose from. Their search engine needs HUGE improvements too–and I’d put that ahead of getting more books because putting in an exact title often does not find the that book until page 2 or 3 of the selections…


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