![]() ![]() According to Coker, “ Bottom line, romance readers – readers we love dearly at Smashwords – are reading Scribd out of house and home. He also realized that the most popular titles would be cut because they were costing Scribd more. Coker estimated that as much as 80-90% of the Smashwords romance and erotica books were culled from Scribd’s library. On Tuesday, Mark Coker, founder of the Smashwords publishing service, announced that Scribd had yanked a huge number of SmashWords romance and erotica titles from the catalog. Romance readers hate feeling unloved.īlog posts came, too. Fans and writers alike were tweeting about the romance purge, and readers were already vowing to leave Scribd. Then again, what about those Harlequin books some fans could no longer find? A temporary glitch? Or something else? I learned something was wrong with Scribd on Twitter before I learned anything from Scribd. So while many fans were upset, others thought this would help make titles from large publishers easier to find. ![]() ![]() Some? Estimates say the 30,000 romance titles on Scribd could have dropped to 8,000! At first, fans thought only indie titles (such as titles from Smashwords and Draft2digital) were being removed. However, this week, fans noticed that some romance titles were disappearing. (You think they joined to read Sexual Homicide: Patterns and Motives? No, me neither.) These fans joined because Scribd had no many authors. Scribd also added indie romance titles, particularly Smashwords titles - those can range from new romances and erotica, to previously published books put back in print by their authors. More Johanna Lindsey, and lots and lots of Harlequin titles. After I left, Scribd added even more books, particularly romance. With so many big name authors avoiding Kindle Unlimited, many romance fans prefer Scribd, however. This might mean that longer books will become more profitable than shorter works for KU authors. For example, Amazon recently announced that they would now pay authors by pages read rather than books read. Amazon is also quick to change payment terms. Authors have learned they make more money from shorter works, and less money from shorter ones, which is why many authors have turned to serializing longer books. Also, KU isn’t without controversy because of the lower pay scale for authors. At least those articles were accurate and well-researched. Only to learn that anybody can pretend to be an expert, and one company was even “publishing” mental health pamphlets put out for free by the Australian government. I ended up using KU to read shorter works, such as tiny books about reference topics that I didn’t want to pay $4.99 and up to read. In the end, I eventually quit KU because I could never find time to read the novels I downloaded - the novels I bought came first. Sure, they had fewer books from big publishers, but I could read them on my Kindle. I tried Kindle Unlimited and stayed there for a little longer simply because I could read the books on my Kindle. Even with the free months, they still made money from me because I decided to keep my subscription going for a little longer. While on the program, I read a couple of chapters from a young adult romance I’d been interested (only to get bored with it), and some of the Lance Armstrong book. It was like one of those terrible dreams where I’m in a great bookstore but can’t find my purse. I hard a hard time fitting my tablet in my purse. ![]() With the advances in eBook readers, if I wanted to read all those great books, I’d have to read using an app. Then I found out that I hated reading in the Scribd app, and I wasn’t crazy about reading on their website. Avon titles! Pride and Prejudice continuations! Carla Kelly books! I couldn’t wait to dive in. And the romances? Everything from major romance authors such as Julia Quinn to Julie Garwood to Jude Deveraux and Johanna Lindsey. The books waiting in my library ranged from Cycle of Lies: The Fall of Lance Armstrong (still in hardback then) to new adult titles to lots of recent young adult titles to a textbook on homicide by Robert Ressler, and more. Big publishers that refused to make books lendable on Amazon or to add their books to Amazon’s Prime Lending Library and Kindle Unlimited joined Scribd. The number and variety of titles were astonishing, and there were books from both major publishers and indie publishers. About a year ago, I tried the free trial offered by eBook subscription service Scribd. ![]()
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