Scribd is an online publishing website which claims to be the world’s most popular social publishing site, receiving more than 60 million visitors per month. Scribd allows users to post documents in a variety of formats and embed them into a webpage in the iPaper format. More than 50,000 documents are uploaded daily, making Scribd something like the YouTube of the written word.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the publishing company Simon & Schuster has announced plans to offer 5,000 titles for distribution on Scribd. The publisher will set the price for the titles. The prices will probably be close to the price for print books, with a possible 20% reduction for title published on Scribd.

Amazon offers electronic books which can be viewed in plain text format on its Kindle book reader device. The different with iPaper is that no special device is required, and books have the same appearance as print versions.  Books may be read on the Scribd website, or downloaded in PDF format and printed.  This partnership between Simon & Schuster and Scribd could offer some serious competition to the Kindle.