Free Books! was how the snippet on Shelf Awareness began.
The MailTribune of Southern Oregon ran a story on a new bookshop in Medford, Oregon “Ideals in Action. Book Exchange offers free books and runs on online sales.”
The shop is called the Rogue Book Exchange and their tagline is:
Have a book, leave a book – want a book, take a book.
“It’s a free, nonprofit bookstore and we pay the rent by online selling about one in 50 of the books that people give us.” says Jenny Hamilton who owns the shop with here husband.
An intriguing model to say the least and given all that has gone on with the Jackson County Library system of late it I wanted to find out more about the shop and how it came about. It is interesting to hear how the county’s library woes contributed to the birth of the shop and it will be really interesting to see how this model develops over time. There are seeds in here.
Here are excerpts from a interview with Jenny Hamilton
Book Patrol: How did you guys come up with the concept? Where there any similar models out there that influenced you?
Jenny Hamilton: Someone in nearby Ashland, Oregon actually started a very similar business just after the libraries closed and was selling it two months later. I went in to talk to him and was considering buying it but realized i wouldn’t really be comfortable with the business model unless it was organized as a nonprofit (he was operating as a sole proprietorship), since it had such a small start-up cost i decided i’d just start something similar…as i was doing my online research i came across the web site for the book thing in baltimore (www.bookthing.org) and was heartened to see that the business model has been successful in other locations.
BP: Did the recent Jackson County library closure/fiasco play a part in formulating the concept?
Our libraries are open again, but they outsourced their operation to a private company based in another state. so yes, they’ll operate for lower expenses but all profits are now going out of state. There are fewer jobs and the ones that still exist don’t pay as well as they did. in a lot of ways, this turned out to be a union busting maneuver, even if it wasn’t planned that way. I’m glad to have the libraries back but i sure don’t like they way it was done.
Hamilton concludes “it’s such a feel-good business model… everyone coming in is enthusiastic and encouraging and generally hard to convince that “yes, the books really are free (but there’s a cash donation box by the door if you’d like to make one).” i’m really having fun with it… i’m surprised more used book stores aren’t doing it.”
Marty Manley, the CEO of Alibris and former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Labor under President Clinton, is fond of saying “All analog media wants to become digital. All digital media wants to become free,” he calls it Manley’s Law. What Manley doesn’t mention is that some parts of analog media might want to become free too.
A tremendous amount of inventory flooded the market when sites like Alibris and AbeBooks came on the scene. The influx has created unrelenting downward price pressure on most books with many being rendered worthless (from a commerce perspective). There are literally hundreds of thousands of books for sale at any given time for a penny on Amazon. This price point did not exist before online bookselling.
Are these the first rumblings of a workable model that would include a portion of your inventory being available for free?