Two years after abandoning its unlimited subscription model in favor of monthly loans, Scribd announced that its subscribers will again be able to access their entire vast library of e-books and audiobooks. However, there is one catch: insatiable readers will be strangled if they read or listen too much.
Founded for giving documents online, Scribd started its approach to the bookseller market by selling and renting e-books with a subscription. The company later expanded this subscription service to include audiobooks (and then more audiobooks) and graphic novels. With a living content library, the Scribd subscription plan gave meaningful benefits, but the company inflicted some limitations on the plan in 2016. At that time, users were given loans so that they could only read three e-books and one audiobook every month. From the entire Scribd library. They could read an unlimited number of books from a rotating set of titles called Scribd Select.
The change seems to have operated, which is unusual for the fact that similar sites, such as Oyster (advertised as Netflix from books), closed the store. The site later added newspapers and reported that it had more than 500,000 subscribers last year, and it has become profitable.
According to Publisher’s Weekly, the site remains profitable. He now has 700,000 subscribers, and the company says it could return to this model of unlimited subscription. Subscribers who pay for a monthly subscription of $ 8.99 no longer need loans to access any book they want, and Scribd Select, which offers an unlimited number of books and audiobooks, is leaving. But there is a big exception to this unlimited subscription: if the company says that you read or listen too much, you will be limited. In a blog post, the company says that such users will be presented with a preview of the book with a date that tells them when they can access it.
Under the site’s license agreement, Scribd may restrict access to its content for any reason, including “the costs associated with Scribd for such content or the nature of your use of the Scribd.com site”. TL DR: if you read so much that companies cost more money, you will be strangled. We contacted Scribd for details of the exact restrictions and will update them if we respond.
But even with this restriction, returning Scribd to its unlimited subscription is a good move for customers searching for a good book. Now you don’t have to worry about throwing out a monthly loan for a book that you might not like.
What has changed for existing Scribd members?
Very little! You will notice a slight change in your browsing experience: the Scribd Selects directory has been deleted and you will no longer see unlimited switching in search filters. Without the demand for monthly loans for full access to the titles accessible on Scribd, you no longer require a different choice of Scribd Dowloader or an unlimited catalog! If you find a book or audiobook that you like, just start reading or listening – we will deal with everything else on our part.
With this new subscription plan, we have continually rotating catalogs of names that will be completely accessible to you without the want to use loans to gain full access. If you only see a preview of a particular title, you should also see a notification about when actually this book or audiobook will be completely accessible to you. If so, then this heading will become fully available to you on the indicated ate on the About Us page of this heading. If this is a title that you have already added to the saved titles page, you will see it in the “Available soon” section at the top.
