E-book service Scribd has teamed up with the New York Times for a new joint subscription offering: Subscribers of the new Scribd and New York Times bundle get unlimited access to the Times’ website as well as over one million e-books, magazines and audio books for $12.99 a month.
Included in the bundle is basic digital access to the New York Times website as well as the New York Times app. The Times currently sells basic digital access on its own for $2 per week, which comes to around $8.70 per month. Scribd charges its users $8.99 for unlimited access to e-books, audio books and magazines. This means that the bundle saves subscribers close to $4.70 per month.
Scribd launched in 2007 as a service to host PDFs on the internet. The company first introduced a la carte sales of e-books and other documents in 2009, and eventually launched a subscription service in 2013. It now has more than 750,000 paying subscribers, and attracts some 100 million unique visitors per month.
“Creating a bundle that benefits authors, journalists, publishers, and consumers is core to Scribd’s mission – we started with documents and added books, audiobooks, magazines and articles into our product,” said Scribd CEO Trip Adler in a statement. “We’re excited to expand this model and bundle with a trusted global news organization to offer a single subscription to one of the largest libraries of content, and the best of the written word.”
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“As we continue to grow our subscription business, it’s important to show potential subscribers that New York Times reporting reaches well beyond news and politics — from Styles to Science, Culture to Climate to our investigative work,” added new York times marketing partnerships managing director Russell Kern. “Scribd’s engaged, diverse and global audience is the precise group we are looking to introduce to Times journalism.”
Scribd and the New York Times first teamed up in 2017 for a student bundle. The two companies aren’t the only ones looking to boost subscriber numbers with discounted bundles: Spotify teamed up with Hulu for a joint $12.99 subscription plan earlier this year, and subsequently boosted its $5 student subscription plan to include both Showtime and Hulu.