Scribd is evolving to help take on Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited service

Scribd is rolling out a revamped version of its unlimited digital book service today. E-book subscription services are getting more popular lately, partly because Amazon finally starting to offer one of its own, Kindle Unlimited, last month. Scribd compete’s with Amazon’s service as well as with established rival Oyster. The Scribd service offers people a selection of over 500,000 digital titles, including books from major publishers as well as a number of bestsellers.

Scribd wants to be to bibliophiles what Netflix is to couch potatoes. The ebook subscription service is rolling out a new browsing experience, which uses human curation and an algorithm-driven recommendation engine to facilitate user discovery. While the platform already allows readers to peruse books based on categories like genre and popularity, Scribd will provide access to a variety of collections unique to the service. These range from personalized selections derived from a customer’s recent history to those hand-picked by the editorial staff and guest authors. In a recent call with The Verge, co-founder Jared Friedman explained Scribd is powered by an extensive tagging system similar to that used by Netflix. The service also classifies books based on more unusual categories. “We look at the writing style. Is it fast-paced? Is it dialogue-intensive? Is it written in the first person?”