Scribd Slashes Number of Romance Titles Available

Posted on July 2, 2015

Scribd has tried to position itself as Netflix for books. For $8.99 a month, readers can read unlimited ebooks and comics. But Scribd has a problem: it's just too popular. Specifically, it has a romance reader problem.

The romance readers read a lot of romances. Every time they read to around 10% of the book Scribd has to pay royalties to the book publisher. The company was never expecting that so many people would read romance ebooks and is losing money on the deal. So it's pulling many of the romance novels from its site.

Nienmanlab reports that Scribd sent a letter to book publishers that the company will need to adjust the proportion of titles across genres to make the service viable. Scribd told publishers that romance titles may no longer be available.

In a blog post, Scribd CEO Trip Adler assured readers that romance is here to stay and that the service still offers thousands of romance titles. He said subscribers who have started reading a romance that is scheduled for deletion can finish it before it goes away.

He said that going forward the company will be rotating titles in and out in various genres. He admitted the company has been experiencing some "growing pains" but promises they are "committed to our romance audience."