Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Scribd Challenges Amazon and Apple With ‘Netflix for Books’

wired.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 57 posts

Re: Scribd Challenges Amazon and Apple With ‘Netflix for Books’

#41

Post by trendoid »

GotNothing wrote: post #27

$8.99 is too high for this to be worth while for most readers, IMO. I'm a pretty regular reader and I'm lucky to get through 1 and half books a month. Most books I buy are under this price (around $5)... I can sample from Amazon before I buy, so I don't see the benefit here unless you're a power reader and most people are not.

I read only non-fiction and sometimes I have to read through 20-40% of the book to decide whether I want to finish it. I think many people do same with fiction(especially fan-fiction). So there's niche for these people too. Many of these people are also bad at finishing books and such services will unfortunately encourage this behavior!

Re: Scribd Challenges Amazon and Apple With ‘Netflix for Books’

#42

Post by paul_f »

g4m8i7 wrote: post #20

I've spent some time with this. NB This is my experience on the Android app and the website. In the app, searching is abysmal. There's no way to specify the type of keyword you're searching for, so if it's an author, you'll probably have to wade through a sea of wildly irrelevant results to find that maybe they don't even have anything from that author. I grabbed two different versions of Mary Shelly's Frankenstein,…

This is awful. Scribd is not the answer. So I guess nothing to see here, moving along.

Re: Scribd Challenges Amazon and Apple With ‘Netflix for Books’

#43

Post by dunham »

bentcorner wrote: post #38
dunham wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It looks like they're using a custom font with scrambled letters (essentially a caesar cipher) and your browser isn't loading/using that font. This is probably an attempt at DRM.

It's a simple substitution cipher, not a shift/caesar cipher. Neat idea, but I wonder at the effectiveness of it.

Hmm, I guess I've been using that term incorrectly to describe fixed substitution ciphers. It's been a few decades since I learned this stuff.

It's effective at preventing a simple copy/paste or "view source" but ineffective against an adversary of any sophistication.

I've seen this used in PDF files before. There, if you have a pristine copy of the embedded font, you can just look up a copy of the character program to find the original value. But it's effective against naive pdf to text or pdf to html services.

Then again, you could just ocr the rendered text, so I guess the obfuscation technique only has to be as effective as rendering the text as a bitmap.

Re: Scribd Challenges Amazon and Apple With ‘Netflix for Books’

#44

Post by TillE »

hosh wrote: post #35

I generally like where this going, though I disagree with the assertion that "it will be easier to browse". The potential for browsing will be increased. However, the actual user experience of browsing for books on the internet still pretty much sucks. Most places take the low-hanging fruit and have pretty good searching capability. However, searching and browsing are not the same experience. Recommendations (like fr…

I completely agree about the terrible state of browsing in online bookstores.

In terms of non-fiction, I've discovered tons of books at a university library by searching the catalog for a few books on a given topic, then going to the shelf and looking at all the books around it, which I would not have otherwise found.

I'd love some kind of Dewey Decimal browser with a bunch of extra filters. I don't know if that's feasible.

Re: Scribd Challenges Amazon and Apple With ‘Netflix for Books’

#45

Post by weeksie »

hosh wrote: post #35

I generally like where this going, though I disagree with the assertion that "it will be easier to browse". The potential for browsing will be increased. However, the actual user experience of browsing for books on the internet still pretty much sucks. Most places take the low-hanging fruit and have pretty good searching capability. However, searching and browsing are not the same experience. Recommendations (like fr…

Honestly, I reckon that using _much_ larger thumbnails would be a big step forward in the experience. Most people pick books by their covers, then check out the blurb on the back. Amazon's thumbs are tiny, hell even the product page has a tiny image. I think that experimenting with size alone would get you quite a long way.

Perhaps take a cue from fashion brands like Gilt who have had to recreate the retail experience for shoppers.

(someone please do this . . . please)

Re: Scribd Challenges Amazon and Apple With ‘Netflix for Books’

#46

Post by wiredfool »

philwebster wrote: post #3

It would be great if public libraries offered this service (or one like it) to their patrons. My local library offers Overdrive Media Console [1], but the selection always seems to be lacking and the apps are subpar. An electronic rental service with books that people actually want to read would be killer and could save libraries money. My library system has cut back on inter-library requests because of shrinking fun…

My library has overdrive as well, and I get the books on the kindle (app). There's an option to read on their site, but the software sucks compared to the dedicated reader. I think they also do adobe's epub as well.

Re: Scribd Challenges Amazon and Apple With ‘Netflix for Books’

#48

Post by cakeface »

ernesth wrote: post #10

After 24symbols, youboox, publie.net, izneo, oyster (and probably lots I do not recall), we have a new contender as the netflix/spotify for books? What makes scribd better or more challenging to amazon?

Also safari books for tech content

Re: Scribd Challenges Amazon and Apple With ‘Netflix for Books’

#49

Post by hosh »

hayksaakian wrote: post #37
hosh wrote: post #35

I generally like where this going, though I disagree with the assertion that "it will be easier to browse". The potential for browsing will be increased. However, the actual user experience of browsing for books on the internet still pretty much sucks. Most places take the low-hanging fruit and have pretty good searching capability. However, searching and browsing are not the same experience. Recommendations (like fr…

To respond to your note about browsing. Typically books are arranged alphabetically and thematically. Some times, shelf placement is a variable in marketing. When you take shelf placement as marketing to it's logical extreme, you end up with something like Amazon -- where you've optimized for conversions rather than overall user experience. As any Sales / Marketing person can tell you, best experience != most convers…

Sure, and granted, the personal device I was thinking of is to arrange it thematically on how I want to present the books to guests. Not necessarily as product categories (genre). However, to say that Amazon takes this to the extreme misses the point. Amazon is optimized for conversion only because there has not been better browsing experiences. You go to Amazon when you are looking for something specific and maybe buy a book off of the recommendation. You don't go to Amazon when you are bored and looking for something new to read.

I think though, the rest of your argument is sketchy. "Amazon and most e-commerce is a bad comparison though, as browsing is generally bad for transactional businesses" That's great, except that Amazon is not optimized for browsing, it is optimized for searching, as I've mentioned in my comment.

Re: Scribd Challenges Amazon and Apple With ‘Netflix for Books’

#50

Post by hosh »

TillE wrote: post #44
hosh wrote: post #35

I generally like where this going, though I disagree with the assertion that "it will be easier to browse". The potential for browsing will be increased. However, the actual user experience of browsing for books on the internet still pretty much sucks. Most places take the low-hanging fruit and have pretty good searching capability. However, searching and browsing are not the same experience. Recommendations (like fr…

I completely agree about the terrible state of browsing in online bookstores. In terms of non-fiction, I've discovered tons of books at a university library by searching the catalog for a few books on a given topic, then going to the shelf and looking at all the books around it, which I would not have otherwise found. I'd love some kind of Dewey Decimal browser with a bunch of extra filters. I don't know if that's fe…

"I'd love some kind of Dewey Decimal browser with a bunch of extra filters. I don't know if that's feasible."

See, that's what I mean. When you're creating a space to show off or show case books, you're not really using any structured form of organization. The experience is more a form of an art. It's more like creating an art gallery or a museum than it is replicating a category system. The category system is easy; crafting a museum experience, that's harder.

Post reply on HN