Social publishing and document sharing site Scribd is now testing an e-book store.
The company will be providing an 80-20% revenue split (favoring the publisher unlike Amazon's revenue model which takes 70%) and there are no monthly membership fees. Content publishers are able to make changes in real-time and receive sales data immediately. There are some built-in marketing tools, enabling publishers to share previews of items for sale. The Scribd store also ensure mobile-platform distribution, as the system will make sure content is available for mobile devices and e-reader devices like the Kindle.
Perhaps the most interesting feature is the ability for publishers to opt to sell rights-managed documents. Publishers will be able to set their preferenes to allow those purchasing content to download the PDF, view on Scribd, download the PDF with DRM or download an ePub with DRM. After setting the preference, Scribd will also help ensure that there will be no unauthorized downloading of documents from the Scribd site through its Copyright Management System (CMS).
Additionally, Scribd is also preparing to launch an iPhone application for the Scribd store that is very much like the Kindle for iPhone app.
