Harlequin books
IN PHOTO: Harlequin books are pictured at a store in Ottawa May 2, 2014. Canadian newspaper publisher Torstar Corp said it would sell romance novel business Harlequin Enterprises Ltd to News Corp for C$455 million ($415 million) in cash. News Corp will run Harlequin as a division of HarperCollins Publishers, Torstar said on Friday. REUTERS/Chris Wattie

Romance readers will have fewer choices on Scribd. The digital subscription service has reduced a considerable number of romance and erotica titles on its database.

The service offers an unlimited library of books to subscribers who pay a monthly fee of US$8.99 [$11.95] per month. For voracious readers, the fee is reasonable. After all, they get to read as many books as they can online with a fixed price. Many of these readers choose romance titles, which is why Scribd has disappointed a large number of their subscribers with its latest announcement.

In a letter sent to the publishers, as obtained by Smashwords, Scribd explained it is adjusting the “proportion of titles across genres” in a bid to continue the expansion of its size and the variety of its service. The company’s CEO, Trip Adler, explained the move further, assuring their subscribers that its romance genre is here to stay and that the service still maintains a robust catalogue of romance titles. Scribd is apparently only beginning to adjust the proportion of titles across genres to ensure the company’s setup can be sustained.

However, it still meant an undisclosed number of titles will be taken off the shelf. The affected books will remain in subscribers’ library until July 31. After that, the titles will be permanently culled from the collection. Some of the books that are on subscription will also be unavailable. As Adler said, the company will be tweaking its catalogue and rotating titles in and out on a continuing basis. This is to ensure the romance readers will always have something fresh to read.

Few books that are priced US$3.99 and up will remain in the catalogue, according to some reports, but Scribd has not revealed how it has determined which titles will be staying or going. A rep from the company told The Bookseller that Scribd “is not singling out any specific publishers, small versus big, etc.”

Smashwords, a U.S.-based self-publishing and distribution company, estimated about 80 to 90 percent of the company’s romance and erotica titles will be dropped by Scribd. “Based on what I’ve been able to glean, the lower the price and the higher the word count, the better the odds the book will remain,” CEO Mark Coker surmised.

As of now, publishers are still unclear which titles will be discarded by the subscription service. Subscribers, however, have already received notices from the company, telling them the titles in their personal Scribd library that will be deleted by July 31.

Contact the writer: a.lu@ibtimes.com.au