Scribd Pulls Digital Comics From Its Subscription Reading Service (the-digital-reader.com)

Popular ebooks platform, Scribd has quietly removed digital comics from its subscription reading service. According to a report on The Digital Reader, the feature was added in February 2015, and may have been pulled as part of a cost-cutting measure. From the article: Scribd confirmed the news in a statement: "We launched comics in 2015, and while we were excited to bring new content to our readers, few actively took advantage of them. We will be focusing our efforts on enhancing the experience surrounding our other great content types including books, audiobooks, magazines, and documents. We alerted comic readers of the news via email in early December. We understand that this news is disappointing to comic readers. This was a difficult decision, and we hope that they'll explore the rest of what Scribd has to offer in the coming months." It's interesting that Scribd says that they informed subscribers, because that is not the impression I get from the complaints on Twitter. Many were surprised when they noticed, and based on the timestamps the comics were apparently pulled on or before 1 December.

Comments

"As a cost-cutting measure..."

[camperdave]

This is the problem with subscription services; the provider can change their mind at a whim as to what they provide, leaving subscribers in the lurch. We saw it with the disappearing e-books a while back. Cell phone providers are changing plans all the time, as are TV providers. The situation will only get worse with Software-As-A-Service providers. What are you going to do when your budget software service goes under, or is acquired by a bigger provider and is shut down? Or when your backup provider stops supporting your OS?

... and this is on top of all the third party data sharing, affiliate advertising, and security bypass "features" that modern services employ.

I heartily recommend avoiding subscription services like the plague.

Re:"As a cost-cutting measure..."

[drinkypoo]

This is the problem with subscription services; the provider can change their mind at a whim as to what they provide, leaving subscribers in the lurch.

This is only a problem if you pay for a long period (e.g. a year) at a time, and they refuse to refund your unused portion if they substantially reduce their relevant offerings.

another one

[xlsior]

Amazon has pulled tons of comics from their Kindle Unlimited subscription services as well in the past: http://goodereader.com/blog/e-... Apparently the big 'problem' with comics (compared to novels) is that the average reader can/will read a few of them in an hour, as opposed to be a few days/weeks for a novel, which really skews the payments and projections, making them too expensive to cover costs under the subscription. Plus there's often extra deals with the publishers like no cost if the reader reads less than 10% of the book which is not uncommon with novels, but for the average comic books that's only a couple of pages so pretty much every reader hits the threshold.

Re:Scribd

[Hognoxious]

It does much more than that, like getting you to sign up for a free trial and then charging you for it.