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Between the success of Spotify and Netflix, the flat-fee online subscription service has already taken over music, movies, and TV. Now, Scribd will try to add books to that list. But can it really upset a business where books are already free at the library?

Scribd, the online document-sharing site, struck a deal with HarperCollins publishing yesterday to sell their backlisted books on a subscription service for a monthly fee. That will make older books available for sale, though none of HarperCollins more recent bestsellers will be included in those made available. Consider it a paid digital library card, then, but only in the section in the back of the room.

The price will be about $9 a month, which puts it right near Spotify's $10 and Netflix's $8 fees. That's intentional, of course, as the Scribd CEO Trip Adler pointed to those companies as the clear inspirations for the deal: "Given the success of Netflix in video and Spotify in music, it's inevitable that you're going to have a similar service in the book space--and it could be a really big business," he said to Fast Company. The service looks pretty smooth, too, as TechCrunch's embedded 2001 Neil Gaiman book American Gods shows.