Scribd and getAbstract Offer Contrasting Approaches to Nonfiction Summaries

Scribd’s creation of free, short summaries of nonfiction books has rankled publishers—who were not contacted in advance or asked for permission. We talk with another company that does similar work as a partnership with rights holders.

Late in June, the subscription service Scribd announced its rollout of 500 Snapshots, its name for short summaries of nonfiction books meant to take about 15 minutes of text or audio time to consume. They’re offered as a discoverability tool: “Discover your next favorite book in a snap.” 

While Scribd’s intention seems to have been benign, there was some industry grumbling as soon as the announcement was made. Michael Cader at Publishers Lunch (paywall) reported that Scribd apparently wasn’t working with publishers or authors as rights holders to get permission to create what the company calls “the literary equivalent of a movie trailer” about a book. As Cader put it, this could be seen as “a way of delivering highlights from a book with no compensation to the author and publisher, who only get paid when subscribers are sufficiently enticed to go read the full title.” 

Cader followed up two days later (paywall), writing that “At least one publisher confirmed to us they immediately expressed concerns about the program and are evaluating the future of their business relationship with Scribd as a result.” When Publishing Perspectives asked Scribd for clarification, a spokesperson returned a statement indicating that Scribd does hold the rights to its Snapshots, which are not made up of others’ copyrighted material: “Snapshots are completely original content,” the Scribd statement reads. “We have a dedicated content team that draft and review each and every Snapshot and have integrated these into the product to drive readers to the full title. We did not work with publishers on the first 500, [and] this is largely because we wanted to get this offering integrated into the product so that we can start testing and learning. We’re open to working with publishers and authors on these in the future.”

Of course, the initial concern for an author or publisher about this kind of short synopsis work is whether it gives away the key points of a nonfiction work, removing incentive to purchase the full book. 

Scribd’s creation of free, short summaries of nonfiction books has rankled publishers—who were not contacted in advance or asked for permission. We talk with another company that does similar work as a partnership with rights holders. The company offers more than 20,000 10-minute reads that summarize “key insights”—a commonly used term in this kind of work. getAbstract works with over 650 publishers, about 250 of them in the States, including the major houses.

A key distinction here is that while Scribd is a consumer subscription program, getAbstract is mostly business-to-business. Anyone can subscribe. But for the most part, getAbstract serves corporate audiences, some of them human resources teams that want to expose an entire company’s workforce to a suite of books via their summaries focused on, say, aspects of productivity or employee relations.

Like Scribd’s snapshots, most of getAbstract’s summaries do not provide copyright revenue to a publisher or author. getAbstract does, however, negotiate a contract granting getAbstract the rights holder’s permission to create a summary—a key difference with how Scribd has developed its Snapshots to date. Publishers and authors are generally onboard with what getAbstract does, as they see these summaries as marketing tools. 

“In most cases, publishers and authors, because they know about us, will come to us wanting their book to be abstracted,” Savikas says. “And we want to do that in a way that respects their intellectual property. So we do sign agreements with the publishers to secure the rights to summarize. In most cases, they’re more than happy to provide that.”

Nevertheless, the logical concern for authors and publishers alike regarding short summaries will always be that they might depress sales. But when talking with authors who have worked with the getAbstract team, we hear the opposite. Beverly Kaye, for example, who publishes with Berrett-Koehler about employee retention and other workforce development topics, tells us, “I have never found that the abstract keeps individuals from buying a book. If anything, it’s a motivator, and a good one.” Another author, Michael Stallard, whose book Connection Culture has been summarized by getAbstract, says, “I find that many people who read [the summary] go on to read my book. I like it so much that I’ll often send the getAbstract summary of my book to CEO prospects of my consulting firm.”

Bottom line: Cader writes of some “authors, agents, and publishers” being unhappily surprised with Scribd’s Snapshots, and perhaps that is precisely what should be avoided: the element of surprise. Unlike asking for permission later, a collaborative or transparent approach earns good will. Controversies over these types of summaries aren’t new to the industry; we last covered such a case in late 2017, when Instaread, an iOS app, began using in-house writers to produce summaries of nonfiction books in text and audio, accessible via paid subscription. When we asked a publishing expert at that time whether the use would be considered fair, he said that it may be—but he also said that short synopses can, in most cases, be licensed at an incredibly reasonable cost. He added, “Most authors and publishers would be thrilled to have this extra avenue of revenue and exposure.”