SAN FRANCISCO — Hoping to do for the written word what iTunes did for music, the online document- sharing service Scribd is opening an Internet store that will offer new sales opportunities for authors and publishers, and possibly spawn more bargains for book lovers.
Scribd’s commercial channel, scheduled to debut Monday, marks the first time the 2-year-old service has charged for the material posted on its Web site. It claims to have amassed 35 billion words in an eclectic mix of books, essays, PowerPoint presentations, legal briefs and other documents.
Until now, access to all the material on Scribd had been free, although two months ago the company began to let publishers upload books with links to other Web sites where a copy could be bought.
Now San Francisco-based Scribd will pocket 20 percent of each sale completed in its own shop and pay the remaining 80 percent to the creators or copyright owners of the written material.
It’s a concept similar to other publishing sites, including Lulu.com, but Scribd appears more likely to shake up the market, said Gartner Inc. analyst Allen Weiner.
Scribd’s biggest advantage is a system that will allow any document bought from its store to be read on different gadgets — a personal computer, an electronic book reader like Amazon.com Inc.’s Kindle or a sophisticated mobile phone.
“That’s the Holy Grail right there, so I think this could turn into a really big deal,” Weiner said.
As its site has grown, Scribd has turned into a piracy magnet as people post unlicensed copies of books and other material. But Scribd Chief Executive Trip Adler says his site quickly removes any unauthorized documents when it’s notified of a problem. And the new store on the site will have copyright management tools, letting writers limit the number of devices that can store books or other material bought from Scribd.
The publishers already committed to Scribd’s store include O’Reilly Media, which specializes in books on technology subjects. O’Reilly is turning to Scribd to sell a primer on Twitter before the book is even available in print.
Scribd’s store gives authors a way to bypass the publishing industry so they can bring their books to market more quickly and perhaps make more money than they would have from following the conventional route. Book lovers, in turn, could benefit from prices below those found in traditional book stores or even on Amazon.com.
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