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The Literary LifeWe rent books. We talk books.November 20th, 2009 People Magazine: “The Best Pampering Presents for Mom”Read the full article at People.com
BOOKSWIM BOOK RENTAL CLUB Most new moms don’t have time to buy books – let alone read them. This cool service allows you to read and return at leisure. Bonus: right now, the company is offering a $10 gift card to all new customers. Buy It: Bookswim.com, $23.95 for 3 at-a-time book plan November 20th, 2009 Bookswim.com Launches 1-at-a-time Plan, Speedier Service And “exclusive At Bookswim” DealNEW YORK, NY—BookSwim (www.bookswim.com), America’s “Netflix-style” book rental club has launched a new rental plan that benefit subscribers and shape the growing rental industry’s future. The most dramatic new features, standard on all plans, include:
“Our readers are happier that books now arrive so quickly. BookSwim’s new plans are a success because they’re so radically different,” states CTO Nick Ruffilo. “We no longer need to receive the return at our facility before the next is shipped. We took a risk and the result is turnaround time being cut in half. That’s huge! Something even Netflix or Blockbuster won’t offer!” Ruffilo goes on to explain, “With a changeover to UPS Mail Innovations (www.ups-mi.com) for outbound shipping service, BookSwimmers in California, Washington, and Oregon are seeing the biggest gains — as much as a 60-70% time decrease round-trip. More time with books in your hands rather than in-transit, means the value BookSwimmers see increases significantly.” Additionally, for $9.95, occasional or infrequent readers can now rent any book monthly for the low price of $9.95 with the inception of a 1-book-per-month plan. “Sometimes people just want to rent a book. If it’s a new hardcover, they’ll save 50-66%”, adds George Burke, co-founder and CMO. “Books like Dan Brown’s ‘Lost Symbol’, Glenn Beck’s ‘Arguing with Idiots’, or ‘A Touch of Dead’ by Charlaine Harris are all ‘Exclusive at BookSwim.’” Burke continues, “Think of BookSwim like a movie on opening night instead of waiting for the DVD. We’re the only membership club renting hardbacks – the format of choice for newly published books like next week’s releases ‘Moonwalk’ by Michael Jackson or ‘Nine Dragons’ by Michael Connelly, with the paperback versions maybe arriving a year later. Even today, we still continue to rent Malcolm Gladwell’s ‘Outliers’ exclusively, a year after its November 2008 publication date.” Other added features of BookSwim’s new plans are:
# # # About BookSwim.com November 20th, 2009 Books Bulletin: Write Horrible Sex Scenes, Become ‘Award’-Winning AuthorIt’s November and the weather has taken a turn for the dreary. In an effort to help everyone become a little more cheerful, here’s a light-hearted romp through this week’s literary news: Museum ‘of story and storytelling’ planned for Oxford –Literary Review’s 2009 Bad Sex in Fiction Prize Strikes Again. Prizes have not yet been chosen, but take a look at these excerpts (if you can stomach the prose!) and see which one gets your vote. –Overdue library books return century and a half later, all fees paid. Speaking of due dates and late fees: imagine receiving a $1,000 bill from your library, fifty years later! –“Tokyo Vice” Author Goes To Japan Seeking Enlightenment, Ends Up Writing About Organized Crime. Journalism teachers will tell you to follow the story wherever it leads. It led Jake Adelstein to be placed under police protection– but the story seems to be worth it. –A dark and stormy night: and slightly better first sentences from new books. With a first sentence like “Of Filastro Agustín’s seven children, the only one he couldn’t bear to beat was his youngest son, Edmund,” how could it be bad? –Neil Gaiman continues to wreck the grade curve for other fantasy writers. How do we love Gaiman’s new Graveyard Book? From the Newbery medal to the Locus young adult award and the Hugo best novel prize, to the longlisted for the Carnegie medal and shortlist for the World Fantasy award, in quite a number of ways. Gaiman says he was pleasantly surprised, though “the trouble with saying that is that you always sound vaguely insincere – people assume that with each award the book wins, saying you are surprised is less and less plausible.” With so many awards under his belt, I wonder if Gaiman will wander off to sweep other genre’s prizes. Do you think he’s liable to branch out (and you thought your supremacy was safe, best-selling authors everywhere!)? November 19th, 2009 Women Dominate BookSwim’s Favorite Authors ListLately there has been huge buzz about the lack of women in some of the largest publications’ book lists. One example is Publishers Weekly’s Top Books of 2009 list which was completely devoid of women authors. This has sparked an interesting debate as well as a hot trending topic on twitter #fembook. BookSwim understands the importance of equal representation - and that doesn’t mean that there needs to be an even amount of men and women within any given book list, but that there is an equal vetting process. We took a look at our Top Favorited Authors page. This page is generated by the number of members we have that have selected an author as their favorite. One could call it a popularity contest in a way. As of writing this article, 7 of the top 10 authors are women. #1 James Patterson #2 Jodi Picoult #3 Dean Koontz #4 Stephanie Meyer #5 Janet Evanovich #6 Laurell K. Hamilton #7 Nicholas Sparks #8 Nora Roberts #9 Jennifer Weiner #10 Charlaine Harris What are your thoughts on the top 10 “Most Favorited” authors? -Nick November 18th, 2009 Shoestring Magazine: Cheap Reads: Swapping, Selling & Renting Books Read the full article at ShoestringMag.com Book lovers lament that “no one reads anymore,” but four websites are proving that millions of people worldwide do still crave the tangible tome — they’re just getting smarter about how they acquire them. We’re not just talking about Google eBooks and Amazon Kindles here, we’re talking about real, book-smell-smelling books with a spine and the seriously active social communities who love and are willing to share them — both in review and in the pulp. BookSwim.com BookSwim launched in May of 2007 on a similar “Netflix” rental model, only for books instead of movies. Plans start at $9.95 per month, a “one book at a time” plan for occasional readers, and BookSwim also offers a de facto try-before-you-buy service, allowing members to purchase (at a discount) the books they’ve read and loved enough to own. “We take care of all the shipping and the books arrive directly at your home, so there’s no need to pay for gas or postage,” Burke said. “I think most of our members are readers who wish they had more time, but because of everything that’s going on in their lives, they have a tough time justifying to themselves the time spent going to a library or bookstore. So they rely on BookSwim to rent most if not all of their reading material, whether classics or new releases, eliminating the need to schedule an extra trip around store hours. And if time is money, well, we practically make all of our readers millionaires.” Buying secondhand or vintage gifts or acquiring things by swapping is soaring in popularity for some people — and is actually expected to increase this year, according to BrandWeek — so sites like BookSwim are trying unique approaches for luring in holiday shoppers, like “free $10 gift cards to friends and family.” For more information on their special offers and their partnership with Restaurant.com, check out BookSwim.com……… So, what are these book-loving startup-junkies reading? ………..”Six Pixels of Separation by Mitch Joel is a book my CTO Nick Ruffilo just handed to me. It’s about leveraging the interconnectedness between people to pass a message that will resonate with friends, and friends of friends, and so on. He won the book, coincidentally through one of the hundreds of GoodReads giveaways, which represents an effective viral distribution channel employed by this book. I thrive on books like this, so it shouldn’t take long to read… especially since he placed sticky notes on the important pages for me. :-)” ~ George Burke, founder of Bookswim.com November 17th, 2009 “NJTC to Celebrate Science & Technology in NJ” by New Jersey Technology Council2009 Awards Gala Will Honor Region’s Top Innovators SOMERSET, N.J. Nov. 16 /PRNewswire/ — The New Jersey Technology Council is gearing up to honor the most exciting technologists in the region at the 2009 NJTC Awards Gala set for tomorrow, Tuesday, Nov. 17, at the Palace at Somerset. This annual black tie awards dinner is sure to attract the region’s most exciting innovators and thought-leaders. In fact, despite the sluggish economy, the NJTC reports an ever-expanding guest list. There is still time to register to attend this event, which is often called “the best networking gala of the year!” Visit www.njtc.org or call 856-787-9700. (Pre-registration is required. No walk-ins will be accepted.) This annual event recognizes the “Best in Technology” companies as well as educational and technology support leaders. The gala honors companies, an educational institution and one individual for their commitment to innovation and the technology communities of New Jersey. “This is my favorite event of the entire year because we are able to celebrate not only New Jersey’s best and brightest technology stars but we also take a moment to recognize the wondrous innovations that have been discovered right here in our own backyard,” said Maxine Ballen, president and CEO of the NJTC. “This is one party that is not to be missed!” For the second year in a row, the NJTC will also recognize five “Companies to Watch.” These include: 3D Biotek, LLC, Agilence, Inc., BookSwim Corporation, Gotham Analytics, and iSpeech. The NJTC Awards Gala is held annually to publicly recognize and celebrate some of New Jersey’s most successful companies and their commitment to growing innovation in New Jersey. The event is hosted by the NJTC with support from several key sponsors. About the NJTC: The New Jersey Technology Council is the state’s premier membership organization dedicated to supporting the technology sectors of New Jersey with networking, financing and educational events. Visit www.njtc.org for more information on the Council and details about the 2009 NJTC Awards Gala and the honorees. (Photos will be posted after the event.) 2009 Gala Award Honorees Master Technology Company of the Year: Pepco Energy Services Private Company of the Year: EKR Therapeutics Public Company of the Year: Virgin Mobile USA Growth Company of the Year: Finalists: DataPipe, EHS Technologies and Quantifi, Inc Early Stage Company of the Year: Finalists: IntegriChain, The Talk Market, Inc. and OnPath Technologies Software/Information Technology Company of the Year: Redvision, Inc. Clean/Green Company of the Year: Petra Solar, Inc. Life Science Company of the Year: PTC Therapeutics, Inc. Electronics/Advanced Materials Company of the Year: Hycrete, Inc. John H. Martinson Technology Supporter Award: Kathleen Coviello, NJ Economic Development Authority Excellence in Technology Education Award: DeVry University November 16th, 2009 Monday Mayhem: All Roads Lead to BookSwim #2
blog 21 day cleanse freston - We have a blog, but does it need to be cleansed of freston? Do you have a blog? Have you heard about us from a crazy search term? Let us know! -Nick November 13th, 2009 Sexy Cover for a Book I’ll Never Read…Our friends over at BookGasm recently put out a post of 5 sexy book covers of books that they have no intention of reading. As a quick response, we decided to add to that list and add one more book with a sexy cover/title that we here at BookSwim won’t be reading.
Old Tractors and the Men Who Love Them. Need we say more? This beauty has an ISBN of 0760301298 and can be purchased from Amazon for as little as $3.99 + shipping. Do you know of any funny book covers? November 13th, 2009 Books Bulletin: Glenn Beck or Oprah?Welcome to another post of Books Bulletin, gathering odd, interesting, and wacky news from around the literary world. Work on your vocabulary, Mr. Churchill By now, students in the UK have accustomed themselves to writing essays that will be assessed and graded by a computer. But it seems the computer system toted by the Chartered Institute of Educational Assessors (CIEA) gives low marks to Churchill’s writing (needs to use fewer metaphors) and Ernest Hemingway’s (needs to write with more care and detail). The incredible bouncing pricetag of John Grisham The cost of John Grisham’s Ford County, officially released Tuesday, moved up and down like stock market shares as rivals Amazon.com and Walmart.com extended, then rescinded, their high discounts for top-selling pre-orders. Early in the day, Amazon was selling Grisham’s book of short stories for $9, the same price it had offered for Ford County before publication and a sign that Amazon was ready to continue the cost competition beyond the release date. Walmart.com was selling “Ford County” for $12 early Tuesday, then cut the price to the pre-order discount of $8.98. Rick Riordan remains a gods-fearing author Rick Riordan, the author of the million-selling “Percy Jackson” series about the Greek gods in modern times, has started “The Kane Chronicles,” in which Egyptian gods similarly make mischief, war, love, and other shenanigans in the modern age. The Disney Book Group announced that the first installment, The Kane Chronicles, Book One: The Red Pyramid, comes out in May. For Thrillers, Glenn Beck Is Becoming New Oprah On his radio show and cable television programs, first on CNN Headline News and now on the Fox News Channel, Mr. Beck has enthusiastically endorsed dozens of novelists, a majority of them writing in the thriller genre. Mr. Beck, who now attracts 9 million weekly listeners on radio and 2.7 million daily viewers on television, often selects authors whose plots or characters reflect political stances that mirror his own. But he also promotes the work of authors who may disagree with many of his views. Who’s more likely to influence your opinion to buy a book: Glenn Beck or Oprah? –Chip November 12th, 2009 The Book Trailer - Amazing or Preposterous?Book marketing in the 80’s and 90’s was, for the big publishers, a somewhat standard ordeal. It started with sending out galleys and ARCs (Advanced Reader Copies) to book reviewers and magazine editors. Then traditional advertising spots were bought in the book sections of magazines/newspapers. Upon release, the author was sent around to talk shows and bookstores to talk about the book, all while displays were bought at major bookstores. While some publishers ventured out beyond that, those were the methods that worked - and why should someone do otherwise? Well, along came the internet to shake up the advertising world. Between facebook, twitter, goodreads, LibraryThing, Shelfari, and book blogs, as well as a slew of other online media, publishers have been playing around with how to best utilize these new tools. One of the most recent trends is my topic for today: the Book Trailer. A book trailer is almost exactly like a movie trailer - in fact, after watching quite a few of these, I was asking myself, “When is this movie coming out?” Below are a few examples of book trailers: These are three examples but there are hundreds of these book trailers, drastically ranging in quality and length. Some of them take a humorous approach and talk more about the author, whereas others focus on the book itself. The effectiveness of these book trailers is questionable at best. It becomes nearly impossible to draw a direct correlation of the increased (or decreased) sales of a book based off a book trailer. While a trailer that has 1,000,000 views may be considered a success when it comes to viewership, many forms of media just do not convert as well as others. That being said, trailers do open books up to a wider audience. With some claiming that the average internet user has an attention span of about nine seconds, book trailers with moving images and sounds better capture the interest of most web browsers. These trailers can reach many non-readers or occasional readers and bring better awareness. Personally, I would prefer a sample chapter to get me interested in a book. Animation for me stimulates a different section of my brain and desires. I want to see the movie for Stephen King’s new novel (I’m sure they’ll make one) because of this trailer, not read the book. To me, the beauty of a book is that I get to use my imagination, and not be given the exact likeness of a character. What are your thoughts on these book trailers? Do they make you want to read the book more? Does it give you desire for a movie version? -Nick November 11th, 2009 The Shelf Ratio - Are You a Pack Rat?
The other day I was going through my book shelf to add more books that I’ve read to my goodreads read shelf. I shocked myself at how quickly I got through it and started to think of books that I read and didn’t own. At first, I started to think about the journey that my books may have made - did I sell the book on half.com, had I borrowed it from someone? Was it part of a collection? Had it gotten lost somewhere. Being a concrete thinker who loves statistics, I decided to come up with a ratio - and this ratio is called the Shelf Ratio. Like any good ratio, it comes with a few friends. I’ve decided to outline those ratios and explain what they might tell you about yourself: The Shelf Ratio: The amount of books you own and have on shelves (lost or in boxes don’t count) divided by the number of books you’ve read. To share a bit about me, I will share with you my ratios: What are your ratios? Some milestones and what they mean: -Nick November 9th, 2009 Monday Mayhem - All Roads Lead to BookSwim?
Monday Mayhem is going to be a weekly post every Monday which will highlight things that we find outrageous and enjoyable. All Roads Lead to BookSwim is a short series in which we will outline all of the crazy search terms that lead people to us. Web search is part of our lives… so much so that the search giant Google has made its way into our lexicon as a verb meaning “look up.” You may not use it in your life, but chances are you’ve heard someone say: “I’ll google it,” or “Did you google your new boyfriend?” While many of us do very simple searches and search for common things such as “chocolate chip cookie recipe” and “book rental website” others search with a very different style. To those people, we now say thank you for providing us with some hilarious content. And now, without further ado, I bring you the first installment of “All Roads Lead to BookSwim.” (all of the below were gathered from Google Analytics and are all search terms that resulted in a click to the BookSwim.com website) rakhi - Rakhi is an Indian festival of brothers and sisters. What’s most interesting is that quite a few people came in with this search. Have you found us through some crazy method? What was the craziest search term that someone used to find your blog/website? Let us know! -Nick November 6th, 2009 FOX Business: “Entrepreneurs Climb Over Huge Obstacles to Success” by Teri EvansRead the whole article at FOX Business Are your business struggles knocking you down? Before you consider wallowing in those daily dilemmas, tap into the determination of five entrepreneurs who found a way to succeed despite the most trying professional and personal hardships. ……George Burke, BookSwim.com, Newark, NJ George Burke, 28, started his online book rental business with his best friend in 2007. The setbacks started early. First, they paid a consultant to draw up the specs of their business model, but never saw any results. They were out $1,500 and still had no plan. After finally cobbling together a Web site, the company started operating with a little help from his partner’s parents, the basement of their home became the center of operations. That is, until the township’s zoning board learned of the home-grown operation and forced them to move. Not long afterward, Burke’s partner decided he wanted out of the business. “First, moving into a warehouse compared to a rent-free basement was a scary prospect,” Burke said. “At the same time, my partner and I are negotiating the terms of him leaving. I had a real fear that there was no way I could do this on my own.” Meanwhile, Burke’s chief financial officer unwittingly let bills “slip by,” which led to the company losing its line of credit. Burke slipped into a depression. After hitting rock bottom, he underwent hypnotherapy to conquer his fears and give it another shot. He then hired the right people to help him run the business. Today, he has eight productive employees. He worked out a deal with his former partner, who now receives a portion of monthly revenues. In 2009, revenues are expected to top $1.5 million. “I challenge myself to make sure this thing works,” Burke said. “You see these rainbows of hope and doors that open but it’s a matter of having the confidence to walk through them. Seeing small successes really keeps me going.” November 5th, 2009 Calling All Writers: BookSwim’s 2009 NaNoWriMo CompetitionBrace yourselves, readers and writers worldwide! November is National Novel Writing Month, a huge international event in which over 130,000 would-be writers rush to finish an original 50,000-word novel between November 1st and November 30th. From high school students to professional authors, most of them unpublished, these writers spend one highly caffeinated month writing for the sheer enjoyment of finally finishing that novel. BookSwim is giving all NaNoWriMo writers the chance to expose their work to thousands of active readers. Now announcing BookSwim’s 2009 NaNoWriMo Competition! All NaNoWriMo winners are welcome to submit excerpts of their work for a chance to have their novels published through print-on-demand technology and made available in BookSwim’s catalog! Prizes How to Enter Start with a bang! Copy and paste the first 1,000 words of your novel into the body of your email program along with your name, brief (3 - 5 sentence) summary of your novel, and your preferred method of contact, then attach the first 10,000 words in an .rtf, .doc / .docx, or .pdf file. You need not stop mid-sentence to get exactly 10,000 words– just come to a logical stop as close as you can to that word limit. Email your submission to the ONE email address that best corresponds to the genre of your novel: Speculative fiction (horror, fantasy, science fiction): nanospecfic@bookswim.com Submissions begin immediately and close December 31st. Make our judges want the rest of the story! Round 2: The People’s Vote On February 1st, we’ll count the votes for each entry and declare our official winners! If you win, we’ll work with you to print copies of your book, rent them, and pay you each time a BookSwimmer reads your novel. Questions, comments, or suggestions? Email cobrien@bookswim.com WANT TO BE A CONTEST JUDGE? Send an email to cobrien@bookswim.com with your name and preferred genres you’d like to review for a free month of unlimited book rental! Official Contest Rules: Terms and Conditions 2. SUBMISSIONS OF ENTRIES AND DEADLINES 3. WINNER SELECTION AND NOTIFICATION. 6. GENERAL November 3rd, 2009 Amazon Kindle Endorses The Literary LifeDespite being a person who’s been an actor (unsuccessfully), a writer (unsuccessfully), a programmer (somewhat successfully), a businessman (not successful yet), and a husband (my wife says I’m successful but I think she’s just being nice), I’ve been asked the question “How do you know if you’ve made it on the internet?” Until today, I had absolutely no way of answering that. When I first started using the internet, my answer would have been “have your own domain name.” Now, there are 5 year olds with their own domain name with a whopping 1 visitor a day (themselves). A few years later, I would have said “when you get funding.” But, with companies like WebVan.com getting funding (think buying your groceries from amazon… Mmmm Tuscan 2% milk). Later, I would say that you’ve made it if you’ve made money from your website, but then Google Adsense came around and allowed anyone with a mouse and 10 visitors was receiving a check from Google. Today - I believe I bring to you an ultimate measurement of what it means to ‘make it.’ A… Today, kindle_blog - the twitter name for Amazon’s Kindle blog service, told the world of our presence. The tweet in its exactness follows: “BookSwim.com Rental — The Literary Life - by BookSwim Online Book Rental - Kindle Edition. http://bit.ly/nB1FY” I saw the link scroll by on my TweetDeck (program I use to monitor my drug called twitter) and nearly fell out of my chair. I followed the bit.ly link and realized it went to amazon’s page which allows you to pay for a subscription of ‘The Literary Life’ blog to be downloaded directly to your Kindle. Yeah - I know, we’re in the big leagues now. Well, I’ve gone and made it, I guess its time to retire… Or maybe I should just go back to my day job of keeping bookswim.com up and running. Have you had an “I’ve made it moment?” I’d love to hear about it! -Nick | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Last week was our first installment of both Monday Mayhem and All Roads Lead to BookSwim. We have seen quite a few crazy things that brought in viewers and we’re going to continue that until we’ve run out of crazy things to tell you about. This past Friday was also Friday the 13th, so in light of that, I will be listing 13 new crazy search terms that led people to BookSwim.
