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History[edit]
Founding (2007–2013)[edit]
Scribd began as a site to host and share documents.[12] While at Harvard, Trip Adler was inspired to
start Scribd after learning about the lengthy process required to publish academic papers.[14] His
father, a doctor at Stanford, was told it would take 18 months to have his medical research
published.[14] Adler wanted to create a simple way to publish and share written content online.[15] He
co-founded Scribd with Jared Friedman and attended the inaugural class of Y Combinator in the
summer of 2006.[16] There, Scribd received its initial $120,000 in seed funding and then launched in a
San Francisco apartment in March 2007.[6]
Scribd was called "the YouTube for documents", allowing anyone to self-publish on the site using its
document reader.[14] The document reader turns PDFs, Word documents, and PowerPoints into Web
documents that can be shared on any website that allows embeds.[17] In its first year, Scribd grew
rapidly to 23.5 million visitors as of November 2008.[18] It also ranked as one of the top 20 social
media sites according to Comscore.[18]
In June 2009, Scribd launched the Scribd Store, enabling writers to easily upload and sell digital
copies of their work online.[19] That same month, the site partnered with Simon & Schuster to sell e-
books on Scribd.[20] The deal made digital editions of 5,000 titles available for purchase on Scribd,
including books from bestselling authors like Stephen King, Dan Brown, and Mary Higgins Clark.[21]
In October 2009, Scribd launched its branded reader for media companies including The New York
Times, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, The Huffington Post, TechCrunch, and MediaBistro.[17]
ProQuest began publishing dissertations and theses on Scribd in December 2009.[22] In August 2010,
many notable documents hosted on Scribd began to go viral, including the California Proposition 8
ruling, which received over 100,000 views in about 24 minutes, and HP's lawsuit against Mark Hurd's
move to Oracle.[23][24]

Subscription service (2013–present)[edit]

Screenshots of Scribd's subscription service

In October 2013, Scribd officially launched its unlimited subscription service for e-books.[11] This gave
users unlimited access to Scribd's library of digital books for a flat monthly fee.[11] The company also
announced a partnership with HarperCollins which made the entire backlist of HarperCollins' catalog
available on the subscription service.[25] According to Chantal Restivo-Alessi, chief digital officer at
HarperCollins, this marked the first time that the publisher has released such a large portion of its
catalog.[26] In March 2014, Scribd announced a deal with Lonely Planet, offering the travel publisher's
entire library on its subscription service.[27]
In May 2014, Scribd further increased its subscription offering with 10,000 titles from Simon &
Schuster.[28] These titles included works from authors such as: Ray Bradbury, Doris Kearns Goodwin,
Ernest Hemingway, Walter Isaacson, Stephen King, Chuck Klosterman, and David McCullough.[29]
Scribd added audiobooks to its subscription service in November 2014 and comic books in February
2015.[4][30]
In February 2016, it was announced that only titles from a rotating selection of the library would be
available for unlimited reading, and subscribers would have credits to read three books and one
audiobook per month from the entire library; unused credits roll over to the next month.[31]
Scribd's unlimited service launched on February 6, 2018, and includes access to an unlimited
number of books and audiobooks, alongside unlimited access to news, magazines, documents, and
sheet music,[32] for a monthly subscription fee of US$8.99.[33] However, under this unlimited service,
Scribd will "occasionally [...] limit the titles that [members are] able to access within a specific content
library in a 30-day period."[34] The previous credit system for books and audiobooks was removed.[32]
In October 2018, Scribd announced a joint subscription to Scribd and The New York Times for
$12.99 per month.