Global subscription deal for S&S

Simon & Schuster has partnered with Oyster and Scribd to offer subscriptions to its backlist e-book titles.

It is a global deal for the publisher, including subscriptions to UK backlist titles as well as US ones.

US-based Scribd, which was founded in 2007, offers readers unlimited access to digital books for $8.99 a month and Oyster, which began in the US in September 2013, offers the same service for $9.95 a month.

S&S’s president and chief executive Carolyn Reidy said the publisher made the decision to allow its e-books to be available on subscription after the success of the model for other media such as music and film. “We expect that our participation in these services will encourage discovery of our books, grow the audience and expand our retail reach for our authors, and create new revenue streams under an author-friendly, advantageous business model for both author and publisher," Reidy said. She added that the business deal was one that respected “the value of our authors' creative endeavors and supports our mutual goals of selling the most possible copies of their books."

Ian Chapman, chief executive and publisher of S&S UK and International, said the company "couldn’t be more excited" to work with Oyster and Scribd to open up a new channel of discovery and sales for Simon & Schuster UK’s authors. "It is important for us to create new and diverse revenue streams, while at the same time experimenting with new ways for readers to find and read e-books.  We fully expect that this will encourage readers to take a chance on and purchase more of our books,  while broadening the overall marketplace for our authors”.

Lonely Planet announced it was partnering with Scribd to make travel guides available in March and HarperCollins US titles became available on the platform in October 2013 .

E-books subscription start up Oyster raised $14m in investment in a deal with Highland Capital Partners to help it “take on even bigger challenges around the future of books and the sharing of ideas," in January . Both platforms are more popular with consumers in America than they are currently in the UK.

Trip Adler, co-founder and chief executive of Scribd, said: "We are excited to offer this impressive list of Simon & Schuster's titles to our audience of 80 million readers around the world on Apple, Android and Kindle Fire devices, as well as the web. This Simon & Schuster partnership is a significant opportunity for its publishers and authors to monetize, and for our readers to discover even more books to love."

The chief executive of Oyster, Eric Stromberg, referred to the deal as a “landmark” one.

"We fundamentally believe the access model will inspire new audiences to discover and read great books, both today and in the future, and this partnership is a huge leap forward toward our goal of making Oyster the best place in the world to read books,” he said.