Scribd cuts romance and erotica titles | Books | The Guardian

Because Scribd has to pay the authors of the books they make available on their site, it is now shelling out more money than it can make back in subscriptions, thanks to the voracious appetites of romance and erotica readers.

In a letter to publishers and self-published authors on Tuesday, Scribd bosses said: "In starting Scribd, we bore the majority of the risk when establishing a business model that paid publishers the same amount as the retail model for each book read by a Scribd subscriber. Now, nearly two years later, the Scribd catalogue has grown from 100,000 titles to more than 1m. We're proud of the service we've built and we're constantly working to expand the selection across genres to give our readers the broadest possible list of books for $8.99 (£5.74) per month.