A subscription model that offers readers access to books a chapter at a time has potential to generate equivalent revenue and convert browsers into buyers. By Edward Nawotka As noted in today’s feature story by Javier Celaya, the all-you-can-eat “Spotify model for e-books” is tricky to monetize properly. But would it be superior if e-books were offered on an à la …
Could E-book Rentals Ever Be Viable for Trade Publishers?
By Edward Nawotka Today’s feature story looks at some of the consumer driven e-book models being implemented by text book publishers. One of those is book rental, where a student can rent a textbook at the fraction of the cost of buying the book. In textbook publishing, where books can run to the hundreds of dollars for a single specialized …
E-Book Lending: Boon or Bane to Publishers?
E-book lending may not seem in the best interest of publishers, but it will only lead to additional sales, argue the creators of new e-book lending site EBookFling.com. Editorial by Chip O’Brien, BookSwim.com “The reality is that the biggest threat to book-writers and publishers is that their works are simply invisible to people who get all their information from the …
Is Monetizing the Used E-book Market the Next Big Opportunity?
By Edward Nawotka A little more than ten years ago a furor arose in the book world when Amazon.com announced that it planned to sell both new and used editions of the same book on the same Web page. Publisher vehemently opposed what they saw as a move that could cannibalize new book sales and benefit the retailer. Previously, you …
How Book Rental Service BookSwim Refined its Recommendation Engine
By Nick Ruffilo, CIO/CTO BookSwim.com I’ve seen quite a bit of discussion around metadata and its power, but numbers that confirm its usefulness are rarely announced. Six months ago, BookSwim.com rebuilt its search and recommendation engine. The results from the upgrades were mind-boggling. BookSwim is an online subscription book rental club. Members can rent unlimited titles from our catalog by …
Bookswim.com’s Top 20 Rentals
US Book rental service Bookswim.com offers their Top 20 rentals for the week… #1 – Safe Haven #2 – Wicked Appetite #3 – Freedom: A Novel #4 – Room: A Novel #5 – The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo #6 – The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest #7 – I’d Know You Anywhere: A Novel #8 – The Girl …