03/02/2019 Scribd - Wikipedia

Scribd began as a site to host and share documents.[12] While at Harvard, Trip Adler was inspired to start Scribd after
learning about the lengthy process required to publish academic papers.[14] His father, a doctor at Stanford, was told it
would take 18 months to have his medical research published.[14] Adler wanted to create a simple way to publish and share
written content online.[15] He co-founded Scribd with Jared Friedman and attended the inaugural class of Y Combinator
in the summer of 2006.[16] There, Scribd received its initial $120,000 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.[14]
The document reader turns PDFs, Word documents, and PowerPoints into Web documents that can be shared on any
website that allows embeds.[17] In its first year, Scribd grew rapidly to 23.5 million visitors as of November 2008.[18] 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 e-books 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.[17] ProQuest began publishing dissertations
and theses on Scribd in December 2009.[22] In August 2010, many notable documents hosted on Scribd began to go viral,
including the California Proposition 8 ruling, which received over 100,000 views in about 24 minutes, and HP's lawsuit
against Mark Hurd's move to Oracle.[23][24]

Subscription service (2013–present)

In October 2013, Scribd officially launched its unlimited subscription service
for e-books.[11] This gave users unlimited access to Scribd's library of digital
books for a flat monthly fee.[11] The company also announced a partnership
with HarperCollins which made the entire backlist of HarperCollins' catalog
available on the subscription service.[25] 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.[26] In March 2014,
Scribd announced a deal with Lonely Planet, offering the travel publisher's
entire library on its subscription service.[27] Screenshots of Scribd's subscription
service
In May 2014, Scribd further increased its subscription offering with 10,000
titles from Simon & Schuster.[28] These titles included works from authors
such as: Ray Bradbury, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Ernest Hemingway, Walter Isaacson, Stephen King, Chuck Klosterman,
and David McCullough.[29]

Scribd added audiobooks to its subscription service in November 2014 and comic books in February 2015.[4][30]

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.[31]

Scribd's unlimited service launched on February 6, 2018, and includes access to an unlimited number of books and
audiobooks, alongside unlimited access to news, magazines, documents, and sheet music,[32] for a monthly subscription
fee of US$8.99.[33] However, under this unlimited service, Scribd will "occasionally [...] limit the titles that [members are]

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