Bubble 2.0? Website wants to be the Netflix of books

The site: BookSwim.com.

Quoth Mashable: For about $20 per month, you’ll get three books mailed directly to your house. There are other plans available if you’re ambitious and would like more books sent to you on a monthly basis.

So I’m paying you $20 a month instead of going to the library? Well, Mashable thinks so: “The hope for Bookswim is obviously to capitalize on the laziness of book readers who don’t want to go to the library.”

How big an audience is that?

(Me and TechDirt seem to be thinking along similar lines of late — see Bubble 1.0 Hype Ideas Brought Back To Life By 2.0 Companies)

add to del.icio.usDigg itStumble It!Add to Blinkslistadd to furladd to ma.gnoliaadd to simpyseed the vineTailRank

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 6th, 2007 at 5:39 pm and is filed under BookSwim, Bubble 2.0, Marketing, Netflix, TechDirt. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

5 Responses to “Bubble 2.0? Website wants to be the Netflix of books”

  1. Steve Says:
    September 6, 2007 at 6:58 pm

    Could be a lot of us out there. I’m *so* bad at returning stuff to the library that I just don’t use it any more. Used books: Purchase them all the time. I finally read Lord of the Rings (short story) and each book is from a different edition (different style cover). The oldest from the 70’s I believe.

  2. collateraldamage Says:
    September 6, 2007 at 7:41 pm

    Speaking as someone who has read LotR a couple of times I always tell people to just read The Hobbit. Same story, 1/6th of the time.

  3. Clever Squirrel Says:
    September 7, 2007 at 7:33 am

    Your post made me laugh hysterically about paying for library services. Who knows if there is a market out there… but what about the days where there was a mobile library and you just waited for the truck to come around to return your books?

    As a used book store owner (http://cleversquirrel.net) I can understand someone wanting to touch and feel a book… but read and return… who knows…

  4. collateraldamage Says:
    September 7, 2007 at 2:05 pm

    I once considered opening a used bookstore. Mrs. Collateral Damage, whose father was in book publishing biz, told me she thought I should do something safer like sky diving. Without the parachute.

  5. Clever Squirrel Says:
    September 7, 2007 at 9:56 pm

    Yeah… It’s risky business. The hardest part is the large compitition like Amazon, Abe books, etc. Not to mention the space you need to store everything. I don’t think I have been able to park my car in the garage…. ever!

    My bf is in the used music/film business (http://undergrounddiscs.com) and surviving… but the non glorious part of the biz is the shipping. Sometimes we have shipping parties just to catch up.

    For a hobby it’s loads of fun. For a full time job… from both of our experience, it’s lots of work. You really have to be pasionate about what your doing.

Leave a Reply