BookSwim, but how to stay afloat?
BookSwim aspires to be the Netflix for books, though their site has been down and I’ve been unable to test. When I first discovered Netflix, I had hoped this kind of service would come into existence, but the site-down situation (the worst possible for an online service) has triggered some cautionary thoughts.
Continued after the jump.
Essential to a business staying afloat, of course, is profit, dependent on how enticed the users are to subscribe and how low the operating costs can be kept. On the first point, I’m curious to try the service only for the sake of curiosity, as I’m quite content with queuing my books for free on the New York Public Library website. When they are available, I pick up from the closest branch to my workplace, which happens to be a mere block away.
I’ve found NYPL’s selection of books as satisfactory as Netflix’s choice of movies, if not more. Neither carry everything I’ve ever wanted to borrow, but those have tended to be either foreign and/or old (although I’m sometimes surprised by what I can find). Reading also takes longer than watching a movie (and several readers prefer to read slowly), so the number of books you can squeeze in for the monthly rate might not prove as profitable.
On the second point, book lenders need to pay for more storage space, damaged (or lost) books cannot be as easily replaced as DVDs, and packaging and shipping books tend to be more expensive, all adding to a higher operating cost.
The downside with public libraries is that first you need to be in a town where you’ve got a good one, and even when you’ve got one, there is wait involved (needless to say, Netflix’s promptness, compared to the slow-paced libraries, should be a top priority!). Sometimes several library books on reserve arrive all at once (though you can always pick up some later, as they have a waiting period after which they are returned). You will probably run into the same problem if you sign up for plans offering more than 3 books at a time. And though the Netflix model has no late fee, I have paid much more in monthly fees, when DVDs remained unwatched for several months.
One way a service like BookSwim can gain advantage is if they offer a social dimension, towards which public libraries can be expected to be slow. Sites like goodreads are not easy to use and remain unsatisfactory, and the ability to have friends on Netflix has proved to be fun. Another is to offer popular new books in a huge (huge!) stock since these, even when available in hundreds of copies, are slow to arrive through the public library. It would help their business if it could offer a free 2-week trial as well, but first they must keep the site up, at all times.
