The announcement that a group of major trade publishers were embracing Scribd as a means of promoting and distributing books was interesting. The players include Random House and Simon and Schuster and therefore carry weight. The Scribd service has collected much in its short time and could be described by some as a virtual filing cabinet of stuff ranging from powerpoint presentation, school reports, essays, memos etc.
It has ebooks which can be best described as somewhat long tail and which often expose limited views of stuff you would frankly aviod if you weren’t desperate to pass time.
So we have a repository that can be filled with widgets and ebooks and other book stuff but will that lead to sales and traction or is it merely scattering seeds and hoping for some to take?
Scribd does present a good opportunity to increase viral marketing into social networks and create recommendations but does it pass the ‘so what’ test? Today Scribd remains unprofitable and is still supported by its $14million initial Venture capital
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