BookSwim: Sometimes, What Happens Offline Should Stay Offline

There are some days when I have to buy into the idea posed by a recent commenter that Web 2.0 is a joke. Not everything needs to be online, but there are some folks who apparently think everything from writing letters to blowing your nose needs to be 2.0-enabled. Apparently, this was the driving force behind BookSwim, which is positioning itself as a Netflix-type service for books.

BookSwim follows a similar pricing structure to Netflix's, with 150,000 titles available 3 at a time for $19.99 a month, 5 at a time for $23.99 a month, 7 at a time for $27.99 a month, 9 at a time for $31.99, or 11 at a time for $35.99 a month. As with the video rental services, you can take as long as you'd like to read the books, and the next one on your queue is shipped as soon as you return one. If you like a book, you can notify BookSwim, and they will allow you to purchase it at a discounted rate and then send you the next book in your queue.

There's only one problem with this business plan: Netflix and its cousins that have sprouted up like Blockbuster Total Access were replacing or supplementing rental services that already existed in a brick-and-mortar version. BookSwim's brick and mortar competitor is called a library, and last time I checked, it was free.

My husband was kind enough to point out that there are some people who constantly return books past their due date at the library and they may look at this service as a way to pre-pay those same overdue fees (I'm not sure what he was insinuating there), but in reality, between the library and book community/exchange sites like Bookcrossing, I'm not entirely sure this is a sustainable business model. Are there that many people out there willing to pay to borrow books?

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