Scribd – eBook Resource – Now With an Online Store!

SCRIBD has been around for a short little while, acting as an online eBook resource center, where people could upload books and allow others to download them.  Usually this catered to public domain, out-of-date reference materials, how-to guides, and the like.  But now Scribd went and opened up the BETA version of their online storefrotn, so let the fiction buying commence!
It’s not a bad little storefront, although currently when you click on “fiction” as a category, you still wind up getting title selections like “General Surgical Instruments” (and no, that’s NOT just an oddly named fiction book, I checked).  That said, the actual fiction is getting pretty stellar results.  “General Surgical Implements” has been downloaded only 84 times, whereas the popular fiction is getting average results of 2,000-3,000 downloads per book!  That’s a pretty sweet margin of readers to get from just one infant online e-store.
And for those naysayers among you who worry (ad nauseum) about piracy and e-theft, here’s the fully skinny on Scribd’s hefty security meausres, which they’ve taken to address this very issue:

As reported by PUBLISHER’S WEEKLY:

While Scribd has been in the news lately—and has raised fears of digital piracy—Tammy Nam, v-p of content and marketing told PW the company was committed to policing its site for infringement. Nam said Scribd has a state-of-the art Content Management System (CMS) system in which works are checked against a database—if a document matches a document in its database, the upload is blocked. She conceded the company gets a number of  takedown notices every week—but noted that those notices are dealt with quickly and that the notices even have a positive aspect, as they help the company beef up its database, and strengthen its anti-piracy efforts. All works sold in the Scribd Store are added to the CMS automatically.

And then there’s Scribd’s percentage take, which is one of the most creator-centric in the biz:

The Scribd Store offers a generous revenue sharing agreement with sellers getting 80% of revenue. Publishers and authors also have complete control over price and packaging—they set the price, or set no price at all, and can dictate what to sell, whether entire documents, chapters, even pages. They can also dictate reading options—for example, allowing for works to be viewed on Scribd only, or enabling PDF downloads, PDF downloads with DRM, or ePub downloads. Sellers can also offer downloads to mobile phones and devices.

And where would any new product be without a mobile version?

In addition to the launch of the Scribd Store, the company said it is planning to launch an iPhone application in the coming months. The store is available immediately and is open to buyers and sellers in the United States, with international launches to follow.