George Burke and Shamoon Siddiqui recently launched Bookswim, an online operation that allows readers to rent books much the same way Netflix allows people to rent movies. The two graduates of the New Jersey Institute of Technology posted a beta version of the Web site at www.bookswim.com.
Readers can choose from five rental plans that range in cost from twenty-four to thirty-six dollars per month. Once an account is set up, a customer can choose books from more than two dozen categories and place them in a queue. Bookswim then sends three to eleven books, depending on the chosen plan, to the reader, who can keep them indefinitely. When the customer is ready, books can be returned in a prepaid envelope and the next titles in the queue are mailed.
The new venture comes at a time when independent bookstores are struggling, Bertelsmann is cutting jobs at Bookspan, and voters in Oregon are choosing to shut down libraries. "Could the price of books possibly have gotten any more expensive?" Burke and Siddiqui ask on Bookswim's Web site. "During any given week, the average bestseller lists for more than $20. Read three of these in a month and you're spending over $60! What you're paying for is the right to own the book…but is ownership what you really want?"
Bookswim members can review the books they rent and even rate them on a five-star scale. The "best rental" is currently The Tenth Circle by Jodi Picoult.
