Publisher warms to Scribd store, offers books by Dan Brown, Stephen King

Publisher warms to Scribd store

NEW YORK — The publisher of Stephen King and Chelsea Handler will be selling books through Scribd, the online document-sharing service that the industry has criticized for enabling the downloading of pirated texts.

Scribd says that digital versions of books by King and thousands of others published by Simon & Schuster can be purchased through Scribd’s online store. Excerpts from thousands of books will also be available for viewing and linked to Simon & Schuster’s Web site, where a paper edition can be purchased from the publisher or through a wide range of retailers.

Simon & Schuster is the first of the big New York publishers to make its titles available on Scribd, which launched its store last month. Publishers have complained of numerous pirated texts showing up on Scribd.