As of November 2008,

Renting books, rather than purchasing, helps lower the number of trees cut down each year for virgin paper. BookSwim also plants trees for every gift card we sell.

	As a combination of these efforts, BookSwim has planted or otherwise saved enough trees to reduce 10 TONS of carbon emissions! That’s like taking 14,000 cars - all the yellow taxicabs in New York City - off the street… …enough cars to fill a parking lot the size of152 football fields!
	BookSwim books have traveled over 360 million miles. That’s like going to the sun and back…TWICE!
	BookSwim has shipped over 100,000 books! Just imagine how many gallons of gasoline that’s saved! BookSwim members have a total of $1,432,183.75 worth of books in their rental pools. That’s money they’ll never spend!

Hello, fabulous BookSwimmers! It’s been nothing but busy here at the BookSwim office recently, and we’ve been delighted to see that your enthusiasm has been on par with our tremendous efforts. Here’s some of what you terrifically appreciative readers have been sending us lately:

Christina Allen: I just wanted to let everyone there know how much I have enjoyed this service. I love to read but I have to drive a hour into town in order to shop in a book store with any type of selection. This solves my problem. You have a incredible selection of books. Also when I first signed up you sent my books overnight so I would receive them before leaving on my trip. I appreciate that gesture more than you will ever know. Thanks again.

Karen Pancoast: We love BookSwim - it has saved us a huge amount of money. We used to go to Barnes and Noble and spend an average of $110 every month buying books. We would wait for our favorite authors to come out in paperback because it was less expensive. Now we pay our BookSwim fee which is about a quarter of what we used to spend AND we get to read all our favorite authors in hardcover as soon as they come out. BookSwim you are the best!

Diane Browne: I’ve sent two emails to BookSwim’s customer service. Each time I was answered promptly, things were resolved well and I felt that I was receiving personal attention. I love your service and when people ask me why I don’t just go to the library, I now have several more reasons to add to the ones I already give.

Cassandra Kawka-Vlahos: I am so excited to be a part of this organization! Not only does BookSwim have an unimaginable selection of books to read, but they also will do anything to exceed a customer’s needs. For a great price and the easiest way to read to your heart’s content, it’s an offer that cannot be refused!!!!

Frank Alfieri: As a high school student, I have a ton of books for school, but I also love to read. With my bookshelf overflowing and money running low, a friend introduced me to BookSwim. It’s amazing! My local library never has the books I want in stock, and BookSwim is so cheap, easy and convenient to use. I can read all I want and never have to worry about space again!

Melinda Owens: I am addicted to reading. I work full time, and have a family, so I know this sounds crazy, but reading is my outlet. I read a book a day. My husband, who is an accountant (so that says it all) freaks that I buy so many books ranging from $7.00 to $15. This is great. I recommend to everyone, I get my books and save money!!!!!!!

Read more testimonials and scroll to the bottom to post your own for the world to see!

Contrary to the current economic downturn, renting books from BookSwim.com has not only been unimpeded, but has actually increased during these recently troubled times. Current subscriber growth has increased by 23% when compared to this same time last year. And contrary to the downward trend other subscription-based services have seen, BookSwim has also seen steadily rising subscriber rates following October’s Wall St. burst.

What could be causing this occurrence, in such stark contrast to the woeful reports of suffering brands pouring in each day? Although BookSwim.com’s service is often compared with other rent-by-mail subscription services, including industry giants, Netflix and Gamefly, movie and video game rentals are seen by many as luxury or leisure services. However, a recent article circulated by Reuters suggests, “Books seem to be resistant to economic cycles — an expression of the fact that they are not luxuries but indispensable to life.” (http://www.reuters.com/article/artsNews/idUSTRE49E78T20081015)

Many long-standing BookSwim members credit their easy and affordable access to such a myriad of books as a key element in keeping up with the latest information in business and technology, and even being prepared for job interviews. New members, as well, are excited at the ability to save time and money by selecting reading material online, rather than being bound to the confines of store-hours, especially during these exceptionally busy times.

Another reason book rental may survive and even thrive this economic deterioration is due to the educational nature of books. In a recent article, BizJournals.com points out the widely understood trend: “In a slow economy, workers may head back to school to develop a new skill set, upgrade existing skills or attend graduate school to become more of an asset in the workplace.” Unarguably, the more we read (as a culture and as individuals), the better informed and educated we become.

Many BookSwim users see their subscriptions as a way to obtain the reading materials needed to advance their careers and to help overcome potential financial hardships in the coming months and years, while also benefiting from the cost-saving of book rental.

“The average NY Times Bestseller list price is $22, but our very popular 3-At-A-Time plan allows subscribers to rent at least three books for $9.95 in their first month, alone. You can’t beat renting a book for about three bucks.” says BookSwim Co-Founder and Chairman, George Burke.

Boy, do I have great news for you!

The Warehouse:
You may recall our warehouse mishap last week. With additional help from friends, family members and former interns, not only did we get everything cleaned up by Friday, but we even got ALL of last week’s packages checked in and new ones sent out! We would have e-mailed you Friday, but passing out from exhaustion seemed more appealing at that particular moment.

Yes, as we strolled into work this morning, it was business as usual with everything back on track. We were very fortunate that only a few dozen out of the 50,000 toppled books were damaged. We had their funeral over the weekend. BookSwim co-founder, George Burke, gave a beautiful eulogy.

We would like to take a moment to sincerely thank you not just for your patience, but also for your many letters of emotional support and encouragement as we dealt with this worst-case-scenario.

It’s often said that the Chinese word for “crisis” also means “opportunity”, and we have utilized this opportunity to develop more efficient ways for just about every step of fulfillment - from check in, to shelving, to packaging - which means better service for you. We’ve also taken necessary steps to ensure that this never happens again. Yes, BookSwim is actually emerging from all of this as a better service.

The Website:
In other news (as in, things we wanted to let you know last week, but got a little sidetracked), BookSwim.com has some improved features! Most noticeably, you can now log in from the main page. The coolest improvement, however, can be found in the “My Account” section:

In the “Books” column, to your left, you’ll see something new that says, “Return or Keep my Books”. It replaces the erstwhile “Books in Possession” page. There, you can see every title you currently have at home and easily decide whether you’d like to return a book or purchase it at the discounted BookSwim price. It still does pretty much the same thing, but now it’s clearer, easier to use and looks super-snazzy.

“But BookSwim Team, why should I use this feature?” you may be asking. Because knowing which books you’re sending back to us allows us to assemble your next package in advance, getting you the books you want faster!

Many of you around the country are doing two things right now: Getting ready for Father’s Day this weekend and sweating yourselves silly in the heatwave. Well, here at BookSwim, we’re no different.

There’s good news and bad news (bad news should always come first):

The Bad News:
The heat has raught havoc in our warehouse. Shelves have suffered from triple-digit temperatures causing a fissure in one near the end of our exceptionally long row. Imagine dominoes. Tens of thousands of books are strewn and piled on the floor.

Let’s talk about how this affects you: It may take us up to four days to reassemble our warehouse. Until that time, we will not be able to check in returned packages or send new ones.

We have every employee focused solely on this task, from fulfillment staff, to programmers, all the way up to executives. BookSwim is dedicated to quickly resolving this in such a manner that it never happens again.

The Good News:
We will be up and running, and even caught up, by Father’s Day. As a token of our appreciation for your patience through this - our darkest hour - we would like to extend a special Father’s Day gift to all of you:

From now through June 15th, all giftcards, $30 and up, purchased with the promo code FATHERSDAY1 will be discounted by $5. And if your dad is a really big reader, any giftcard $100 or more is $15 off with that code.

Things you can do with BookSwim in the meantime:
1. Read your books
2. Receive books that have already been sent
3. Send books back (we’ll check them in as soon as we can)
4. Browse books on BookSwim.com
5. Add books to your Pool
6. Love us for the tenacious scamps that we are.

Thank you again, sincerely, for all of your patience,
The BookSwim Team

P.S. We’ll be sure to send out another e-mail letting you know when full operation has been restored.

Read the full article at NJBiz.com

New Jersey remains a fertile ground for innovation, as this week’s profile of BookSwim, a Netflix-like online book renter, clearly shows. The idea for the company came from two young entrepreneurs who met as students at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. Their startup is still in its infancy, but looks to have the prospect of good growth.

That’s true of many small businesses, which continue to generate jobs in New Jersey and across the country even as big companies initiate mass layoffs…….

……..What’s needed is not less state funding for fledgling businesses but more. Trenton should an office of small business and technology development to serve as a one-stop center for financial assistance, and to act as an advocate for startups like BookSwim that have the potential to enrich the New Jersey economy and good jobs.

Read the full article at NJBiz.com

Hey Swimmers,

As many of you know from contacting us, our tech department is perpetually toiling on our website to make it even more practical and intuitive for our users. Since the tech guys won’t stop bragging about it, we thought we’d tell you about the latest revision to our website: the new and improved Keep or Return My Books page! Now it’s even easier to purchase books you’d like to keep and let us know which books you’re returning so we can prepare your next shipment.

To check out the shiny new page, click the Return or Keep My Books link (formerly Books in Possession) under your account dashboard. You’ll see all the books currently checked out to you listed in their full glory, with convenient icons for each book that you can click to purchase your book or to mark it as returned. To let us know which books you’re returning, just click the Return Book icon next to each title until you’ve built a complete list of the titles you’re dropping in the mail. Once the list is done, click the “Return These Books Now” button and our team of warehouse ninjas will immediately spring into action, gathering the next books from your rental pool for a speedy shipment.

Speaking of speedy, you may have noticed another recent change in our catalog: The Scarlet Letter is no longer listed in the Gay & Lesbian section! Users like you have attacked the incorrect catalog categorizations quickly and ferociously, helping our catalog become that much easier to navigate. Here are the top five BookSwimmers who have done the most to help us clean up our catalog:

1. Member #18256, Tammy from Oregon: 724 votes
2. Member #12512, Nicole from Arkansas: 633 votes
3. Member #10930, Pamela from Oregon: 590 votes
4. Member #11940, David from North Carolina: 531 votes
5. Member #11389, Stephanie from Ohio: 418 votes

And the best part: none of those votes was wasted, and each one represents another mistake fixed in the catalog. Thanks to all the above, and to everyone else out there voting! Think you can catch up with Tammy and the other top voters? All you have to do is browse through our catalog and click the ‘Wrong Category?’ button when you find a title that doesn’t belong in its category. Remember, if you’re among the top voters, we’ll have a $10 Virtual Gift Card for you as our way of saying “thanks” for helping us improve our title listings. Even if you’ve just heard of this contest, don’t worry– you have the rest of June to catch up with Tammy and the gang.

These are just some of the things we’re doing at BookSwim to make reading with us easy, convenient, and enjoyable. We’re gathering feedback from Swimmers all across the country about the changes you want to see, and the catalog sweeping and new return pledging system will be one of many improvements you’ll see on our website from day to day. Thanks again for choosing to read with BookSwim!

Brothers and Sisters… Today is the day where Swimmers everywhere can search for books that are “New Releases”. Let us rejoice and be glad! See NEW RELEASES!

Anything and everything, published within the last month, will appear in this category for you to add to your Rental Pool. Gone are the days of new release oppression and ignorance. Allow these newly released books to flow into your hearts and your homes. Practice this often, brothers and sisters, and you’ll never let the demon of reading indecision impede your Pool again.

Yes, we say we’ll go out and get your book added to our catalog if you can’t find it.
But lately, some Swimmers, and I won’t name names, have been wondering whether the books they requested were added into the BookSwim catalog. Unfortunately we did not have an alert system to let you know when one of our catalog monkeys imported your book.

Well those days are over. We’ve added a new “Custom Book Request” which is an automatic system of getting the books you can’t find directly into our catalog. Within a matter of seconds, the title is placed into your Rental Pool and is made available to everyone.

As long as the book passes our format and pricing guidelines, you’ll have your book in a jiffy.

And just as a reminder. “Why are we allowing customers to dictate our inventory?” We rely on Swimmers like you to demand the books you want which takes the guesswork out of selecting catalog titles. There is no other service out there that will go and buy books based specifically on your tastes.

Enjoy the new “Custom Book Request”!

Well, we had some really good submissions for the Book Reviewer positions… a lot of them, actually. And my eyes kinda hurt from reading everyone’s sample book review submission.

Finally I was able to choose 13 top-notch Reviewers. Let’s congratulate them on their award-winning submissions and also wish them good-luck in the long, arduous battle of review-writing that lays ahead.

Every package our Book Reviewers receive from BookSwim, they will write a book review on at least one of the books they’ve rented.

And here are the winners, in order of skill level and good-looks
(or in no particular order at all):

1. Elizabeth Taschler
2. Cody Wilshire
3. Jennifer Scott
4. Christy Santos
5. Kristin Zavlavsky
6. Amy Beck
7. Jennifer Hanks
8. Tanya Fischer
9. Erin Hook
10. Kristi Diehm
11. Ivy Reisner
12. Jennifer Zollinger
13. Marsha Stewart

Now, although this isn’t an Equal Opportunity Blog Employment, where are all the male applicants??

Do you often strain to make your voice heard? Do you have loud opinions wrapped in a meek voice? Well BookSwim has your cure!

As members of BookSwim, you either love, dislike, or disgustingly hate the titles. So we want to give you a chance to publicly praise or vilify the books you’ve read through BookSwim.

We’re looking for a total of 10 very opinionated BookSwimmers to become our resident Book Reviewers. Every review you write will be published in the BookSwim Blog and you will be a featured writer on our site. These are not just your “5-star” short reviews. We’re looking for you to show off your writing talent and tell us how you really felt after reading your BookSwim book.

To apply for one of the 10 slots, all you have to do is write a review on one of the last books you’ve read. Entries must be received no later than Friday February 1st, 2008. The only guidelines are that you need to be bold, opinionated, and at least 4 paragraphs in length. If we like what we see, you’ll become a permanent Book Reviewer for the BookSwim Blog.

To stay as a Book Reviewer, you’ll have to review at least 1 book for every package you receive.

Please send your sample review to us at email address: general [at] bookswim.com. Don’t forget to include your full name and member username (or member ID). And don’t forget the deadline to apply is Feb 1st!

So, over here at BookSwim, a few of us are serious fans of PostSecret. We do, after all, stock the book.

Well, this week, one PostSecret in particular caught our eye. Someone, somewhere, is spending way too much money on new books and feels guilty about it.

Since this story is so familiar to so many of our subscribers (as it was quite probably your story before finding BookSwim), we’d like to see what we can do about it. Who can help us help this person? If this person is in your life (or a person in your life could just as likely have submitted this PostSecret), pass along BookSwim to them. Let them know that they don’t need to feel guilty any more. BookSwim is here to help!

November 21, 2007

It’s a quarter to six this Wednesday evening, fifteen minutes before the Bookswim offices close for the night and the Thanksgiving holiday. We’re winding down toward evening and this is the first chance we’ve had in awhile to slow down and take stock of everything that’s happened the past few months. A lot has changed since we first launched this May: we received praise, criticism, requests we hadn’t anticipated, suggestions that couldn’t have been more helpful, and an outpouring of support from avid readers across the country. In the end, we have a lot to be thankful for.

Comments and feedback from many of our customers have helped us improve all aspects of the site: our catalog, our delivery system, our website’s design. Over a thousand readers from Florida to Oregon have chosen to join us and assist our development into what we are today, a dynamic site that continues to adapt to what you want. After many requests, we’re now offering virtual gift cards so you can wrap the gift of reading under the Christmas tree. Just go to http://www.bookswim.com/gift.html and give your friends and family anywhere from a 2-book-a-month plan for your busy college friend to an 11-book-a-month-plan for your speedreading Aunt Edna, from anywhere from one month to six months. You can send the card via email for a classy last-minute gift or print out a physical coupon to wrap and present in person, whichever suits you best. What’s more, we’ve teamed up with an ecological organization called Eco-Libris so for every gift card we sell during the ‘07 holiday season, we will plant an evergreen tree in reforestation efforts around the world. It’s another way we’re trying to make reading a friendlier, easier hobby. See our press release on this at: http://www.bookswim.com/blog/?p=26

Most of all, though, we’re thankful for the patience and enthusiastic support from all the customers who have stuck with us through our rough spots and our golden times. Here are some of the comments we’ve received:

“By the way… I LOVE BookSwim. I tell all my “reading” friends about it. I spent hundreds of dollars a month on books, and found the library to be tedious, with long wait lists. This is such a great site.”

–Maureen R.

“Thank you for being so diligent about following up with me! What great customer service!”

–Anna S.

“Thank you SO much! We really appreciate your willingness to purchase books. We are new members, but so far absolutely LOVE BookSwim.”

–Karen P.

This is what keeps us going through the occasionally long hours as we continue working to give you the books you want, when you want. From us to you, thank you.

From George, Shamoon, Aldon, Olga, Chip, Jules, and Dawn