Simon & Schuster to Sell Digital Books on Scribd.com
By BRAD STONE writing n The New York Times.
Published: June 11, 2009

In another sign that book publishers are looking to embrace alternatives to Amazon.com’s Kindle e-book store, Simon & Schuster has agreed to sell digital copies of its books on Scribd.com, a popular document-sharing Web site.

Books from best-selling authors like Stephen King would be among the titles available for purchase on Scribd.com.

Simon & Schuster, a division of CBS, plans to announce Friday that it will make digital editions of about 5,000 titles available for purchase on the site, including books from best-selling authors like Stephen King, Dan Brown and Mary Higgins Clark. It will also add thousands of other titles to Scribd’s search engine, allowing readers to sample 10 percent of the content of the books on the site and providing links to buy the print editions.
“We are interested in getting our books in front of consumers in as many formats and distribution platforms as possible,” said Ellie Hirschhorn, chief digital officer of Simon & Schuster.
Unlike Amazon, which sets the retail price for its e-books and sells them in its own proprietary Kindle format, Scribd is offering publishers considerably more control over how their digital titles are sold.
Simon & Schuster will sell its books on Scribd for 20 percent off the list price of the most recent print edition. Amazon sets a price of $9.99 for many popular e-books, meaning titles there might be less expensive. But Scribd will allow publishers to see what is selling and change their prices accordingly.

Read the full report at NYT online.