Scribd has announced that it is pivoting away from the unlimited subscription model and moving to a credit-based system for their Everand reading platform in the United States. International expansion is slated for early 2025. This change will provide users with access to bestselling titles found on the New York Times bestseller list, and the Big 5 Publishers will simultaneously release new content on Everand, as they do on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Rakuten Kobo.
There will only be two tiers in the future from Everand: a Standard plan, priced at $11.99 monthly, for one premium title, and a Plus plan, priced at $16.99 monthly, for three titles. Both plans maintain unlimited access to magazines, podcasts, sheet music, and a small catalogue of e-books and audiobooks, including Everand Originals. The bestseller titles from prominent authors will only be able to be read if you subscribe to one of the new plans. Unlocked titles are yours to read or listen to as many times as you’d like for the duration of your subscription.
Existing customers are already subscribed to the old unlimited plan and will have to switch once it comes up for renewal in 2025. Scribd has stated they won’t change existing users yet, but the two-tier plan will be the only way for new people wanting to access new books. Once you switch to Standard or Plus, you cannot revert to a legacy subscription plan.
The credit system for audiobooks or ebooks from the Big Five publishers makes a lot of sense, considering new audiobooks cost anywhere from $25 to $45 each, and e-books continue to sell for $14.99 to $30.00; buying into the new Everand plan seems to be worth it. If you look at others in this space, Kindle Unlimited offers no big-name books on their platform. Audible exclusively deals with audiobooks and is the current market leader. Spotify is making a big push into audiobooks, but they don’t offer e-books. Kobo Plus offers an audiobook plan and an e-book plan separately, or you can subscribe to both for more money, but they also don’t have much of a selection of authors you have heard of.
One of the downfalls of the current Everand unlimited model is that if you are a power user and read/listen to a handful of titles per month, your account is throttled, so you only get access to a weaker catalogue. The new credit-based system provides users more value than the competition since it deals mainly with audiobooks and ebooks so that it will appeal to many users.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
