Good news today for Kindle Fire users who are interested in an ebook subscription service. The company is celebrating 3 million downloads of its Android and iOS apps by releasing Scribd for Kindle Fire.
However, the app is not available in the Amazon App Store. You’ll need to use this link to download it. If you’re not familiar with side loading apps onto a Kindle Fire, they’ve included instructions.
I reached out to Scribd with some questions, and Jared Friedman answered them.
TeleRead: I see the new app is not available from the Amazon App store. Were they reluctant to have a rival reading app in their store?
Friedman: We submitted the Scribd app several times to Amazon over the past three months, but did not receive a response to our requests, so we decided to publish it directly, making it available to everyone.
TeleRead: Do you anticipate that by being a stand-alone download, that will limit the use of the app?
Friedman: Yes, being a stand-alone download does add a few steps to the install process. We would prefer to distribute the app through the app store which would provide the easiest install flow for our users.
I also asked if there were any substantive differences between the Kindle Fire version and the Android version, and the answer was no. They had to make a few technical adjustments to adapt it for the Fire, but functionally, it’s the same. Which means it has the improvements I mentioned in a previous article, including page numbers instead of locations. I don’t know if the Kindle Fire has a version of immersive mode, and if any reader wants to try it out and report back in the comments, I’d appreciate that.
For those of you who are fans of Kindle FreeTime, as a sideloaded app, unfortunately, Scribd won’t show up in FreeTime. Since the service doesn’t have a lot of books for children yet, it probably won’t be an issue, but I did want to make note of it.
As readers of TeleRead know, I’m a fan of both subscription ebook services, and Scribd, and I applaud the company for making their app available on as many platforms as possible. Unfortunately, there’s still no service that’s available for eInk devices, and the first company that cracks that will have a huge technical advantage over the competition.
