Concerns over Scribd sales

As reported last night by The Bookseller, Scribd has announced that it is "beginning to adjust the proportion of titles across genres to ensure that we can continue to expand the overall size and variety of our service...We will be making some adjustments, particularly to romance, and as a result some previously available titles may no longer be available."

There are concerns that sales may fall by at least 50 percent.

Scribd, in an address to Scribd readers, casts the move as a defensive one in a business that must experiment with its model for survival. Writing that "we are facing some growing pains today," he offers these five points to Scribd reader-subscribers:

• First, it means that romance is here to stay. We are maintaining a robust catalog of thousands of romance titles.
• Second, it means that any affected book you’ve already started reading or added to your library will stay there. Titles affected by the catalog changes will remain in your library for 30 days.
• Third, it means that some books that you saw on subscription may no longer be available. We know this may be frustrating news. But we still have thousands of great titles from small and big publishers alike including HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Kensington, Open Road, Harlequin, Draft2Digital, and Smashwords.
• Fourth, we’ll be tweaking our catalog on an ongoing basis, rotating titles in and out, so that romance readers always have something fresh to read.
• Fifth, we’re working hard to establish more mutually beneficial terms with our publishing partners, so that we can continue to grow our catalog.