Netflix Book Model Draws Competitors
By Lynn Andriani -- Publishers Weekly, 7/2/2007 11:39:00 AM
The seven-year-old Vienna, Va., book-rental Web site Booksfree.com is known as a "Netflix for books." People sign up for various plans and receive and return books by mail for a flat monthly fee. But Booksfree is no longer the only book rental site resembling Netflix. Last month, a similar company, BookSwim, in Monroe Township, N.J., launched its home page announcing, "Netflix has popularized online DVD Rental. We’re doing it for books!" While there are some differences between Booksfree and BookSwim, many customers may not be able to tell the difference.
Created by recent grads from the New Jersey Institute of Technology, George Burke and Shamoon Siddiqui, BookSwim calls itself a "book rental library club" with more than 150,000 titles—in both hardcover and paperback—though unlike Booksfree, which boasts more than 96,000 titles, it does not carry audiobooks. A test version of bookswim.com launched in March, and the service opened to the public on May 15. After some media coverage and word-of-mouth publicity, BookSwim has "a few hundred" members and is growing. (Booksfree v-p Bryan Stafford would not reveal its membership numbers, though he said Booksfree sent out 40,454 packages in April). BookSwim also sells used books.
Siddiqui said BookSwim is seeking investment capital and currently employs about 10 part-time college students. The company buys new books from Ingram and used books from Craigslist and Amazon Marketplace, and even garage sales. It stores its inventory in Siddiqui’s basement. (Booksfree gets most of its inventory from Ingram and has a warehouse in Vienna.)
BookSwim members can choose from five rental plans that range from $19.99 to $35.99 a month. They then can choose books from nearly 30 fiction and nonfiction categories and place them in a "queue," just as on Netflix. BookSwim sends three to 11 books, depending on the plan, to members, who can keep them indefinitely. When the customer is ready, he or she returns books in a prepaid envelope; when BookSwim receives them, it sends more books from the member’s queue.
BookSwim’s founders know they face competition, but they think their inclusion of hardcover books sets them apart from Booksfree, which, to keep shipping costs low, only stocks paperbacks and CD and MP3-CD audiobooks. "We want to carry the latest and greatest, and [offering hardcovers is] the only way to do it," Burke said.
Burke and Siddiqui said they are looking to bring libraries on as customers, at a reduced rate, to expand libraries’ inventories. The company is working on a pilot program with one of its local libraries, but would not release the library’s name. The founders also want to include publishers in their venture, since as Burke said, "It’s very burdensome for us to have to purchase all our inventory; it’s very costly up front." He and Siddiqui would like to embark on a revenue-sharing program with publishers, wherein they would pay publishers each time one of their books are rented. However, Burke has not approached any large publishers yet.
