Self-publishing service Lulu is teaming up with Scribd in order to test out its iPaper document viewer, which is made for easy Web-consumption of any type of document. Created as a Web-based alternative to the PDF file format, iPaper simplifies the document sharing and viewing experience by offering a browser- and system-agnostic option for reading documents.
The benefits of using a system like iPaper is that there is an option for Flash use, as well as a full-document search and the ability for these documents to be indexed and crawled by search engines, providing a pretty comprehensive alternative for PDFs. Scribd has been pushing its iPaper option heavily since releasing it several weeks back, providing a conversion option for free, providing a Flash-based option for iPaper, and even involving it in its ad network.