The digital subscription service Scribd—the biggest competitor to Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited in the United States—has acquired SlideShare from LinkedIn. In the announcement, CEO Trip Adler says, “Our acquisition of SlideShare is a major step towards creating the world’s largest digital library. Scribd has accumulated a unique collection of user-generated and professional content that we make available to our readers via personalized recommendations, and the addition of presentations from the SlideShare community advances our vision. It allows us to continue diversifying our offering while driving even more readers to the books, audiobooks, magazines, and other professionally published works in our digital library.” SlideShare has a library of 40 million presentations, with 100 million unique monthly visitors.
Jane Friedman has spent her entire career working in the publishing industry, with a focus on business reporting and author education. Established in 2015, her newsletter The Bottom Line provides nuanced market intelligence to thousands of authors and industry professionals; in 2023, she was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World.
Jane’s expertise regularly features in major media outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, NPR, The Today Show, Wired, The Guardian, Fox News, and BBC. Her book, The Business of Being a Writer, Second Edition (The University of Chicago Press), is used as a classroom text by many writing and publishing degree programs. She reaches thousands through speaking engagements and workshops at diverse venues worldwide, including NYU’s Advanced Publishing Institute, Frankfurt Book Fair, and numerous MFA programs.
