The Literary Life

From the staff of BookSwim.com

Month: August, 2010

‘Mockingjay’ Author Suzanne Collins Honored with First Booksie Award

Not every author is the cliché quiet introvert who has little online marketing expertise. Suzanne Collins, who wrote the Underland Chronicles and The Hunger Games, has won the first BookSwim.com Booksie Award for her marketing success of new young-adult title, Mockingjay.  Collins is honored for her exciting embrace of internet technology at a time when so many publishers are ambivalent about it.

The Booksie Award was created to honor all types of innovation and invention in the publishing industry, in anything from printing techniques to character development. BookSwim.com will announce a new Booksie Award each week during Author Appreciation Month. Honorees, like Collins, are selected by a panel of publishing professionals and receive recognition on the BookSwim site and through BookSwim’s content partners.

Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins

Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins

“I hadn’t considered Suzanne Collins until people started talking about Mockingjay on Twitter,” said Jeevan Padiyar, BookSwim’s CEO and sci-fi buff. A simple internet search turned up the website for the series, www.scholastic.com/​underlandchronicles. The site is not the typical author page with a few factoids and a short bio, but a stunningly realized portal into the Underland Chronicles world. “What really got us excited was the use of flash games to captivate an audience,” Padiyar said. “In just a few minutes I was hooked, chasing fireflies through the Gnawers’ Labyrinth and birthing my own Fishenstein with the Creature Creator.”

Collins began her career in 1991 as a writer for Nickelodeon’s Emmy-nominated Clarissa Explains It All and The Mystery Files of Shelby Woo.  She received a Writers Guild of America nomination for her work on the Christmas special Santa, Baby. Then a meeting with children’s author James Proimos inspired Collins to write children’s books herself. From 2003 to 2007, she wrote the five books of her enormously popular Underland Chronicles. The series met with such acclaim and success that Collins was named one of Time magazine’s most influential people of 2010. More recently, she is the author of the best-selling Hunger Games trilogy, whose first volume landed on the New York Times Best Sellers List for sixty weeks in a row. The latest volume, Mockingjay, came out August 24 and is already the best-selling book on Amazon.com.

About BookSwim.com

Launched in May 2007, BookSwim is America’s only online book rental club offering paperbacks and hardcovers, allowing subscribers to rent books “Netflix®-style” with free return shipping and no due dates or late fees. BookSwim offers nationwide home delivery of hardcover new releases, paperback classics and everything in between. Subscription plans start at $9.95 per month, with an option for members to keep the books they love.

No Comments by bookswim on August 30, 2010
filed in Booksie Awards, Company Blog, Press Releases

Suzanne Collins wins BookSwim’s first BOOKSIE AWARD for MockingJay

Our first award goes to Suzanne Collins, author of MockingJay (Scholastic Press), the last book in the Hunger Games trilogy. In September 2008 Scholastic Press released the first book, The Hunger Games, and it has been on the New York Times Best Seller list for more than 60 weeks in a row. The Hunger Games was followed in September 2009 by Catching Fire. Suzanne’s latest book, Mockingjay, has continued the trend by catapulting to the number one spot on Amazon’s bestseller list just a few days after its release on August 24th.

However, the rampant success of the book had very little to do with our selection of Suzanne as this week’s winner. What really got us excited was the use flash games to captivate an audience. We hadn’t considered the book until people started talking about it on Twitter. A quick web search for Suzanne Collins lead us to her website and the message “Visit the Scholastic website for cool games and info! www.scholastic.com/underlandchronicals.” Within a few minutes we were hooked, chasing fireflies through Gnawers Labyrinth and birthing my own Fishenstein with the Creature Creator.

Mockingjay’s audience is the Young Adult (YA) market. This crossover demographic is composed of two groups: teens, and adults who like YA fiction. A study by Pew Internet published in 2009, shows that 73% of teens play games on a desktop or laptop computer. Likewise, many adults who read YA fiction do so because it re-connects them to the wonderment of childhood. By creating a Flash game that speaks to both populations, Suzanne Collins has not only shown that she understand her audience, but knows how to impassion it out of complacency.

Collins began her career in 1991 as a writer for Nickelodeon’s Emmy-Nominated Clarissa Explains It All and The Mystery Files of Shelby Woo. Soon after she received a Writers Guild of America nomination for her work on the Christmas special, Santa, Baby. After meeting fellow children’s author James Proimos, Collins was inspired to write children’s books herself. From 2003 and 2007 she wrote the five books of the Underland Chronicles: Gregor the Overlander, Gregor and the Prophecy of Bane, Gregor and the Curse of the Warmbloods, Gregor and the Marks of Secret, and Gregor and the Code of Claw. Because of her success Collins was named one of Time magazine’s most influential people for 2010.

Without hesitation, Suzanne Collins and the team at Scholastic are this week’s innovators for creatively using technology to harness the imagination of childhood and convert someone who would have never picked up Mocking Jay into excited fan.

Our hat’s off to you Suzanne! We wish you much success.

No Comments by bookswim on August 30, 2010
filed in Booksie Awards, Company Blog, The Literary Life

Award Creation

In an effort to celebrate innovation in the book industry, Bookswim has launched the Booksie author and publisher award. We believe in supporting the community by spotlighting individuals who break the traditional publishing mold and dare to be different.

One way an author can innovate, is through creative outreach. It is widely held that customer engagement is critical to online marketing. Customers that feel like part of a brand community are not only more loyal, but also more willing to spread the word about the positive attributes of a product or company. According to Infosys, companies show deeper engagement with customers deliver better financial results: 18% revenue growth and 15% gross margin growth for companies with highest levels of engagement and presence. But how a connection is built is critical: the context of experience needs to be relevant to the audience in order to earn goodwill.

Honorees are selected by a panel of publishing professionals and receive recognition on the Bookswim site and through Bookswim’s content partners.

No Comments by bookswim on August 30, 2010
filed in Booksie Awards, Company Blog

Forbes.com: “DRM: Not All It’s Cracked Up To Be” by Chip O’Brien

Read the article by BookSwim’s Director of Member Service CHIP O’BRIEN

While working at BookSwim, we have listened to quite a few debates about digital rights management (a.k.a. DRM, which is the term for access-control systems used by hardware manufacturers, publishers and copyright holders) and its role in piracy. In an effort to shed some light on the land of piracy, we visited a popular torrent site and grabbed some statistics on its most downloaded torrents in the books category, as well as the release date of the physical book, list price, Kindle price and Amazon price.

Here’s what we found:

Rating Number of Downloads Title Release Date List Price Kindle Price Amazon Price
1 156,106 The Beatles Complete Songbook (Guitar Tablature/chords) 2000 $24.99 $14.84 $16.49
2 104,034 180+ For Dummies eBooks (all types) n/a n/a n/a n/a
3 98,576 All 6 Harry Potter eBooks n/a n/a Not Available n/a
4 97,006 All Physics Books Categorized (71 textbooks) n/a n/a n/a n/a
5 92,576 Kama Sutra eBooks (10 in total) n/a n/a n/a n/a
6 83,787 Building Flash Web Sites for Dummies 2006 $24.99 Not Available $22.49
7 83,591 Web Design for Dummies 2nd Edition 2006 $24.99 Not Available $16.49
8 78,325 AutoCAD for Dummies 2008 $24.99 Not Available $16.49
9 69,573 Men’s Health – Total Body Workout 2001 n/a n/a n/a
10 66,523 Visual Basic 2005 eBooks n/a n/a n/a n/a

Here’s what we learned:

1. DRM does not stop e-book piracy: 40% of torrents (files shared) contain books not available in e-book format in their current edition. This means that someone bought a physical copy, cut the spine, scanned the pages and used optical character recognition (OCR) to get a first draft. They then crowd-sourced the Internet to help read through the OCR, correct the files and set up linking. In fact, the process was extremely similar to the professional conversions that publishers are doing today. This is particularly true for J.K. Rowling’s books, which were only recently digitized.

2. E-book piracy may be overstated: 50% of the most illegally downloaded files are collections of books, most of which are irrelevant to the pirate downloading them and therefore do not represent lost sales.

This is a strong statement–let us explain: Typically, an individual seeking a particular “For Dummies” book downloads the entire collection, weeds through the titles and opens only the handful of files that are relevant. The remaining titles never get read. However, from a reporting standpoint, one download of the No. 2 torrent “180+ For Dummies eBooks” represents 180 counts of e-book piracy, not the handful actually consumed. In this case, piracy counts are grossly overstated. Even if 50% of the “For Dummies” collection was opened and read, this would still overstate piracy counts by 100%. In order to estimate an accurate count of losses from piracy, look at the consumption rates of pirated titles, not the sheer numbers of books downloaded.

Piracy is real, but perhaps we should rethink the magnitude of e-book piracy and how effective DRM is as a solution.

Read the article by BookSwim’s Director of Member Service CHIP O’BRIEN

No Comments by Chip on August 27, 2010
filed in Blog, Company Blog, Magazine (Online), Press & Media Clippings, Website

MNN.com: “A ‘good’ reason to donate your books” by Robin Shreeves

Read the full article at MNN.com

Act Bolder challenges book lovers to donate five books to their local library.

I’ve told you before how much I love library book sales. I find a lot of treasures there, particularly on the cookbook table. These book sales get books in the hands of people who need them and love them for a fraction of the cost of new books, and libraries raise much-needed funds from the sales.

The majority of books that libraries sell at these sales don’t come from their shelves; they come from donations from people like you and me. As you can see from the photo above, I’ve got a box full of kids’ books waiting to be taken to the local library for the next sale that will be held in September.

Donating books and buying or borrowing used books are great ways to keep books from collecting dust on shelves and going unused. Another benefit is that keeping books circulating will reduce the amount of books that need to be created.

Right now, and for the next five days, if you donate five books to your local library, Act Bolder will give you a gift certificate for a free month at BookSwim. BookSwim is a Netflix-style book rental site. You order a book from the website. They ship it to you. When you’re done reading it, you ship it back to them in a pre-paid envelope. When it’s returned, BookSwim sends you the next book on your list. There are no time limits and no late fees.

I love the idea of BookSwim, but the lowest plan starts at $23.95 to take up to three books at a time out. You might not be sure if this works for you, but now you can give it a try. If you find in the first month that it wasn’t worth it, you’re not out any money. And, if you find it was worth it, you can continue with a paid membership. Plus, your local library will benefit.

Act Bolder is an organization that believes “It’s time for some good.” Businesses pose challenges on the website, and those who accept the challenge get a reward. The challenges are only posed for a certain amount of time. The current challenge expires in a little more than five days from now, and a new challenge will be up after that.

I’m going to take advantage of this offer. Anyone else?

Read the full article at MNN.com

No Comments by bookswim on August 17, 2010
filed in Blog, Press & Media Clippings, Website

Hartford Courant: “Do A Good Deed Get Rewarded at ActBolder.com” by Korky Vann

Read the article at Courant.com

Call it Groupon for do-gooders. A new website, ActBolder.com, teams up with businesses and suggests positive actions you can take to make the world a better place. Complete a task and you’ll receive a reward. Past challenges have included saying no to plastic bags at checkout and using your bike instead of your car. This week, donate five books to your local library and get a free month of book rentals at BookSwim.com

Read the article at Courant.com

No Comments by bookswim on August 17, 2010
filed in Blog, Newspaper (Online), Newspaper (Print), Press & Media Clippings, Website

Orlando Sentinel: “Donate to your public library; get a free month of ‘BookSwim.com’”

Read the article at OrlandoSentinel.com

Dear voracious readers and book hoarders, this “Need of the Week” is for you.

In case thinning the herd of used books in your stash and donating some to your local library isn’t reward enough on its own — though, really, you’ll feel so much better afterward — there’s an extra incentive this week. As you may know, the Orange County Public Library, like most public libraries, accepts donated books. While it may add a small fraction of the donated books to its collection, generally it gives the books to the “Friends of the Library” charitable organization, which sells the books in its bookstore on the third floor of the Main Library or in the various Orange County branches.

The Friends then donate the proceeds back to the library to support programs and services.

So from Monday (Aug. 16) through Sunday (Aug. 22), the Netflix-style book rental club BookSwim is challenging readers (and horders) of all ages to donate five books to their local library — and, in turn, they’ll get a free month of book rental service.

To register for the challenge, and to redeem your reward, you’ll need to sign up and accept this challenge at ActBolder.com, which is the business that is orchestrating the effort. (Don’t worry; it’s free.) Once you do that, you’ll receive an option to accept the reward linked to the particular challenge. Click “yes” and ActBolder.com will email you a coupon code to redeem the reward.

Yes, it’s a couple of extra hoops to jump through when you could just donate the books outright. On the other hand, it’s a nice little thank you — and you’ll get a chance to add to your literary repertoire without permanently cluttering up your bookshelf.

Why, it’s almost like checking books out of a library…

Read the article at OrlandoSentinel.com

No Comments by bookswim on August 15, 2010
filed in Blog, Press & Media Clippings, Website

ABC 6 Philadelphia: “Save by renting all sorts of things” by Amy Buckman

See the video and read the full article at 6ABC.com

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August 13, 2010 (WPVI) — “The more expensive an item is, the more money you’re going to save by renting.” So says Rental Industry Expert Eric Ginsburg.

Planning a camping vacation? You could buy a Base Camp 4 tent for $349, or rent it from REI.

Once you pay a one-time membership fee of $20, the tent can be yours for $25 the first day, and $15 for each day after that.

There are similar deals on a $299 REI XT-85 backpack and a $259 REI Halo +25 sleeping bag. Both rent for $15 the first day and $10 each day after that. Whether renting makes sense for you depends on how often you’re going to use the item.

“People who go camping all the time, you’re better off buying it,” Ginsberg explains. “But for people who do it once in a while or who want to try it, definitely rent before you buy.”

You can even rent books to read while you’re camping.

Ginsberg says, “You can rent everything from paperback classics up to hard-cover new releases from BookSwim.com.”

“Bookswim.com works a lot like NetFlix does. You have no due dates and late fees. You add all the books that you want into the pool and they send them to you in the mail and you send them back whenever you’re done.”

Plans start at 10 dollars a month.

And if you’re more into music than literature, check out Guitar Affair.

“If you go to Guitar Affair.com you can rent some VERY nice guitars,” Ginsberg says. “A lot of them are custom-made for a fraction of the cost (of buying).”

Everyone’s heard of rental cars, and traditional services are great if you need a car for several days. But ZipCar.com allows members to rent cars by the hour — and they don’t have to be returned a central location.

“You can become a member of ZipCar.com and then rent a car for as little as $11, depending on how long you need to rent it for,” Ginsberg says.

And just about anything else you would want to rent is available through RentCycle.com.

“Rentcycle.com is a really great aggregator of the things you can rent,” Ginsberg explains. “You can punch in your zip code and/or whatever it is that you’re looking for and they’re going to find a number of online and local solutions for you.”

You can rent formalwear for a special occasion by going to Rent The Runway. And you can even rent pets from animal shelters for the weekend through FlexPetz.com.

See the video and read the full article at 6ABC.com

No Comments by bookswim on August 13, 2010
filed in Press & Media Clippings, Television, VIDEO CLIP!

DailyGrommet.com: “Already!?! Daily Grommet’s Ideas to Ease Back-to-School Pain”

Read the full article at DailyGrommet.com

We can’t believe it, either. It’s almost time…
To make your life a little easier this fall, check out our list of back to school shopping ideas. We hope you’ll find some you can use, and we’d love to hear what else is on your back to school list, too.

By Elise Smith


…..Netflix-style Book Rental
Don’t want to lay out big bucks for the syllabus list? Tired of long wait lists for the hottest best-sellers at the library? BookSwim gets it right: for a flat monthly rate pick the books you need for home delivery and keep them as long as you need them. (Memberships start at $19.98 / month) Find out more about BookSwim online book rental here………

Read the full article at DailyGrommet.com

No Comments by bookswim on August 10, 2010
filed in Blog, Press & Media Clippings, Website