Do you know there's a book rental company that works like Netflix does for movies? It's called Booksfree.com.
Subscription rates depend on how many books you'd like to have at one time. Books are shipped two or three at a time, depending upon your subscription. When you return those, the next two-three on your list are sent. Shipping/handling fees are included in the monthly fee. Four books at a time costs $15.99/month. The most popular subscription is 6 books at a time for $21.99. You can get up to 12 at a time for $37.99. There is no limit to how many books you can receive in a month.
Netflix shipping for movies is very fast--just one to two days, usually. Booksfree.com uses media mail, and the shipping takes one to two weeks.
If you do a quick browse through fiction genres, you'll see plenty of Christian fiction. Almost all my books are on there. I do see some problems with their release dates not being correct. For example, they're already listing Amber Morn as an April publication (it starts shipping from the warehouse March 7), so that's correct. But some of their other titles slated for April 2008 publications were released last year.
The company also allows you to donate your own used books--as long as the book is a paperback in good shape and is already on their available list. For each book you donate, $1 is credited to your account.
Anyone out there subscribe to this?
5 comments:
My book's on there too, although with the wrong cover.
Personally, I prefer the public library, and it's free. I suppose not everyone has access to a good library, but if you do, why resort to this cost?
i myself would rather use my library too. alot of libraries do free interlibrary loans from all over the country so most of the time you can get books that your area doesn't own, or even books out of print too for free.
A more basic question that comes out of this is book pricing. I know I don't support authors well. I barely buy a new full price book per year. If books cost $1-3 I'd buy them all the time. If new stuff was available as free ebooks I wouldn't buy paper. But none of that seems fair when I think of the amount of effort it takes to write a book. On back before the industrial revolution many writers had patrons who supported them and book cost was mainly in printing. Now paper books only seem to have value if they are freshly published, and copying technology is virtually free in digital. Pricing seems to come down to effort of creation and market demand. What sort of pricing structures would you support?
I'd never heard of this, but will definitely check it out! I do prefer the library, though. lol
How are you doing, Brandilyn? Haven't heard from you in a while and I know it's mostly b/c i haven't been visiting lately. I'm just super busy of late. But I'd love to hear how you are doing and I'd still like to get together before we leave. Hope to hear from you soon.
eden
Grady, good to see your name pop up! It's been awhile.
You're right--costs for books is mostly the cost of hard copy printing. The new online costs for Kindle are around $10/book. Royalty rates for the author are currently set with the costs of hard copy printing in mind. Perhaps if more and more books went digital, and therefore cost less per book, royalty rates for those kinds of sales would need to be regularly figured into contracts.
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