About Us


Changing The Way America Reads

Could the price of books possibly have gotten any more expensive? 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?

An Idea Is Born

March 2006 - George Burke and Shamoon Siddiqui - We spent our Thursday night as always, freeloading books in our local behemoth bookstore café. When asked to pay for the books along with the coffee, "No, we're just gonna read them and put them back... but thanks for asking."

Now this kind of behavior should never be condoned, but we noticed a pattern - everyone else was doing it, although maybe not so openly. If all of these people are simply reading, why aren't they vagrantly loitering at a library? It's free! Well, there's no double mocha lattes at the library... but through our research to find the answer we discovered that the whole literary distribution model needed to be turned upside down.

Humble Beginnings

March 2007 - BookSwim mails out its first rental book, "The Richest Man in Babylon " to a subscriber who shares our simple vision of RMSL - "Read More, Spend Less". For those who like longwinded explanations, if you don't have to buy every book, you can afford more books; and when they're conveniently delivered to your door, now you've got more time to read them. And unless you're a packrat or a collector, your home shouldn't be cluttered with a mounting pile of books, although you're welcome to keep all of your rental books. Consider it a try-before-you-buy... now that's service!

The Environment

Everyone is concerned about our planet's dwindling resources, and the easiest step we can all take is conservation. Twenty million trees are cut down every year for American book production. BookSwim encourages book rental, rather than purchasing new books, in part because it helps reduce that staggering figure. BookSwim knows that it's both good business and good conscience to take care of the Earth, so we go a step further - for every gift card we sell, we plant a tree through our partnership with EcoLibris.net (a company devoted to planting trees to help balance out those cut down for book manufacturing).

The Future

BookSwim's rental plans, characterized by unlimited books for every member, no late fees and free delivery both ways, are mantras inspired by Netflix's popular DVD service, but act as so much more in the literary world. It's a way to get America reading again. Books nourish our intelligence and nothing captivates our imaginations like an epic story. We want to take on a responsibility to put more books in more hands... 1,000,000 books to be rented out by 2010! And by the time we reach our goal, BookSwim will have saved subscribers $22,070,000 over list price!


 

Start creating a Pool!


» Make a Pool at BookSwim

Here's how it works: add desired books to your Pool, and then we ship them to you! Enjoy the books for as long as you want with no late fees!