(I also found an online service https://dlscrib.com/ created by Erik Fong. It doesn't use this script as some people seem to think!).
Current features:
| Type | Downloadable without Scribd premium | Requires Scribd premium for full download |
|---|---|---|
| Documents | Yes | No |
| Books | Yes | Yes |
| Audiobooks | Yes | Yes |
Some information about Scribd documents:
There are two types of documents on Scribd:
- Documents made up using a collection of images and
- Actual documents where the text can be selected, copied etc.
This script takes a different approach to both of them:
- Documents consisting of a collection of images is straightforward and
this script will simply download the induvidual images which can
be combined to
.pdfby passing--pdfoption to the tool. Simple. - Actual documents where the text can be selected are hard to tackle. If we feed such a document to this tool, only the text present in document will be downloaded. Scribd seems to use javascript to somehow combine text and images. So far, I haven't been able to combine them with Python in a way they look like the original document.
Make sure you're using Python 3 (Python 2 is not supported by a few dependencies). Then run these commands:
**macOS prerequisites for md2pdf / cairo
$ brew install cairo $ brew install pango $ brew install libmagic $ brew install gtk+
Make sure you python Pillow is up to date > 6
$ python3 -m pip install --upgrade pip $ python3 -m pip install --upgrade Pillow $ pip install scribd-downloader
or install the development version with:
$ python setup.py install
usage: scribdl [-h] [-i] [-p] URL
Download documents and books from scribd.com
positional arguments:
URL scribd url to download
optional arguments:
-h, --help show this help message and exit
-i, --images download url made up of images
-p, --pdf convert to pdf (*Nix: imagemagick)
-c CREDENTIALS_FILE, --credentials-file CREDENTIALS_FILE
path to file containing your Scribd premium
credentials
Downloading text from document containing selectable text:
$ scribdl https://www.scribd.com/document/55949937/33-Strategies-of-War
(Text will be saved side by side in a .md file in the current
working directory)
Download document containing images; use the --images option (the tool cannot figure out this on its own):
$ scribdl -i https://scribd.com/doc/17142797/Case-in-Point
(Images will be saved in the current working directory)
The below command will generate an .md file of the book in the current working directory:
$ scribdl https://www.scribd.com/read/189087235/Confessions-of-a-Casting-Director-Help-Actors-Land-Any-Role-with-Secrets-from-Inside-the-Audition-Room
Pass --pdf option to convert the generated output to a PDF.
This will only dowload the book content available without owning a premium account on Scribd. See the below section for downloading full books if you own a premium Scribd account.
This will download .mp3 of the audiobook:
$ scribdl https://www.scribd.com/audiobook/237606860/100-Ways-to-Motivate-Yourself-Change-Your-Life-Forever
This will only download the preview version of the audiobook. See the below section for downloading complete audiobooks if you own a premium Scribd account.
If you have a premium Scribd account, you can also download the full version of textual books and audiobooks.
Create a text file containing your Scribd credentials, such that the contents of the file look like below:
user@mail.com password
Now pass the file path to the -c option, for example:
$ scribdl -c scribd_credentials.txt https://www.scribd.com/audiobook/359295794/Principles-Life-and-Work
It should then download you all the audiobook chapters as mp3. Similarly, you could also download complete contents of a Scribd book by replacing the URL with the URL of your choice.
If you're not willing to use place your account credentials in a file, you could also copy the cookie values
for _scribd_session and _scribd_expire when logged into your premium account on scribd on the web
browser and replace them with the ones in this file https://github.com/ritiek/scribd-downloader/blob/master/scribdl/const.py.
You should then be able to automatically download full version of both textual books and audiobooks from Scribd using the tool by running the commands as usual.
Downloading books from Scribd for free maybe prohibited. This tool is meant for educational purposes only. Please support the authors by buying their titles.
The MIT License