SubscribeA: Lots’a books.
We’re announcing that BookSwim has added an additional 10,000 books into our catalog – the biggest increase than we could have ever expected. Impressed? Here’s the story:
Once upon a time in a land far, far away (last year and… Jersey!), BookSwim began a small book rental company with a big idea. How many titles would we need was the question on our lips. Scientific predictive algorithms were written to come up with a rental catalog that had just enough so that readers could find most of the latest and greatest with many rare gems thrown into the mix. After getting the experts opinions, we calculated 149,079 were the number of titles that would keep our renters happy.
If the experts say so, then it must be true… so in May we launched with a catalog nearing 150k books.
So how did this fare for us and for the readers?
One member — one of our first actually — Jenny Danger (pronounced Dan-gur as she corrected me), realized there was a book she wanted “Guess Who’s Coming Out At Dinner?” which wasn’t in our catalog. We swiftly bought a copy, gave it a product number, added the bibliographic data to the website and gave it rental status. To our surprise, the book was rented out by two additional Swimmers after Jenny.
Other missing titles began getting requested and very quickly, we realized our carefully planned catalog had serious flaws. There were so many books we just hadn’t anticipated being popular in a rental venue. So now what?
LET’S OPEN THE CATALOG TO THE PUBLIC.
October 1, 2007. 9,881 new titles were added to our catalog since we opened in May. THIS PUTS US AT 160,000 TITLES!
What have we learned? We can’t predict the future, so why bother trying? Simply listen to our customers. They know what they want, so it’s up to you – all of you — to decide what books to include in our—err, Your– catalog!
At this pace, BookSwim should be able to boast a catalog 200,000 strong in no time. Hats off to you… and keep up the good work.
AddThis Social Bookmark Button