Simon & Schuster, Inc., a global publishing leader, announced today that its backlist eBook titles are now being made available to consumers via the subscription services Oyster and Scribd. Both services offer flat-rate plans that allow consumers to read an unlimited number of eBooks, and today’s announcement marks the first time that Simon & Schuster has offered its eBooks to consumers via this form of subscription service.
Simon & Schuster’s participation with the two services is global and will include backlist eBooks from Simon & Schuster companies worldwide, with eBooks made available to consumers in all countries where Simon & Schuster holds eBook rights, and where Oyster and Scribd offer their subscription services to consumers.
“Consumers have clearly taken to subscription models for other media, and we expect that our participation in these services will encourage discovery of our books, grow the audience and expand our retail reach for our authors, and create new revenue streams under an author-friendly, advantageous business model for both author and publisher,” said Carolyn Reidy, President and Chief Executive Officer of Simon & Schuster. “We are delighted to work with Scribd and Oyster to offer this exciting new model for readers to find and read eBooks, and to do so in a manner that respects the value of our authors’ creative endeavors and supports our mutual goals of selling the most possible copies of their books.”
As part of the program, Simon & Schuster authors will also have access to information on subscribers’ reading and purchasing activity for their titles.
“Our goal at Scribd is to become every reader’s personal digital library with our innovative subscription model” said Trip Adler, co-founder and CEO of Scribd. “We are excited to offer this impressive list of Simon & Schuster’s titles to our audience of 80 million readers around the world on Apple, Android and Kindle Fire devices, as well as the web. This Simon & Schuster partnership is a significant opportunity for its publishers and authors to monetize, and for our readers to discover even more books to love.”
“We are thrilled about this landmark partnership with Simon & Schuster which will bring to our subscribers some of the most iconic titles and authors in the world,” said Eric Stromberg, CEO of Oyster. “We fundamentally believe the access model will inspire new audiences to discover and read great books, both today and in the future, and this partnership is a huge leap forward toward our goal of making Oyster the best place in the world to read books. We are incredibly pleased Simon & Schuster is taking this step with us.”
