Quick Notes: Scribd, Vook, New York Times

Robin Wauters at TechCrunch notes that independent book publisher Author Solutions (ASI) has entered a distribution agreement with e-self-pub site Scribd. New ASI titles will also be made available for sale via Scribd, and part of its 120,000-title backlist will go up as well. Authors will receive 50% of their titles’ net sales, and can choose to set their own price or leave it with the default of $9.99.

Brad Stone at The New York Times’s “Bits” blog notes that multimedia e-book publisher Vook has raised $2.5 million in venture capital funding. Vook’s founder, Brad Inman, is planning to expand the company, take on more creative talent, and create tools that will allow the creation of hundreds of Vooks per week. (TeleRead has covered Vook a number of times.)

Yahoo has an Agence France Presse article about New York Times executives at the “paidContent 2010” conference discussing their plan to institute a metered paywall on their site. Key points include that they do not expect a significant loss of traffic, and that while they feel a paywall is right for their particular situation it may not be for everyone.