Why does Scribd work as an online selling tool for books?

Scribd is deemed the newest challenger to Amazon. However this was pretty much discovered accidentally by publishers. One author - Bob Seidensticker, complained just a year ago that his book was being made available on Scribd.com (this is short-hand for scribbled by the way).

Scribd quickly took it down after the complaint was posted by publisher, Berrett-Koehler.

However one thing led to another & Scribd was later on discovered to be a very viable marketing venue for books.



Here's some background: Simply put, Scribd is like the Youtube for printed material. It's simple enough to understand - people get to upload material on to Scribd like presentations, files & yes... books too.



So how do we make money off this? Scribd is now uploading excerpt for books on to its site. It's quite similar to Amazon's "Search Inside" feature so it isn't that big a deal really. However publishers seem to be attracted to the idea of having a thousand more views than normal.

The combined material makes Scribd a proverbial library of excerpts for book lovers to enjoy. The lay-out is also pretty simple (in fact it's a knock off of Youtube so it's not that hard to figure out)



So there you go. A new marketing venue for your book. Scribd is FREE by the way so there's no cash out to join. They get a cut from books that are sold through their store though, but I bet you it's not as high as Amazon.

I've been to the site a lot of times because search engines usually lead me there when I'm looking for some items on literature, research material & most of the time non-fictional work. The pages are saved as text so imagine the depth of the content for your book as well as the categorization.
I don't think Scribd will beat Amazon, but I do think it's a worthwhile option to consider.

Xlibris Publishing Promotion - Customize Your Publishing Package With Additional Free Services Up To $5,000

Xlibris is trying to be a bit more original this month compared to self publishing company counterparts iUniverse and Authorhouse. Instead of going with the free books and/or percentage discount routes. Xlibris has decided to provide additional add-on and marketing services to authors who would like to purchase any of their publishing packages.

Reading from their website, Xlibris is giving up to $5,000 worth in free services. $5,000 of course comes with their highest package - the Platinum, which already has a lot in it (which it should since it's available for a cool 13 grand), I can't imagine anybody wanting more. But nevertheless the promotion breakdown goes like this:

• Xlibris basic package which starts at $499 has an additional $250 worth of free services

• Xlibris professional package at $899 comes with $400 worth of free services
• Xlibris custom package that sells for $1,599, has $750 worth of free services
• Xlibris premium package that costs $2,999, als comes with $1,500 worth of free services
• And finally Xlibris' executive package that comes just below their platinum sold at $5,999, has $2,500 worth of free services.
  

So if you imagine that's a value of half the package that gets added back to your spending power. The fine print though which you should know mentions that entitlement to free services does not include printed marketing materials, leather bound editions and/or bookstore returnability.

As an added bonus, probably just to match or better the running iUniverse offer, Xlibris is also giving away an additional 20 free books until the 15th of August. This is a tiered offer of course so those getting the basic package will get 5 free books while those getting higher value packages will get more free books (on top of the free books already in the publishing package)