Recently I had an opportunity to catch up with Dustin Hubbard, founder and CEO of Paperspine, about his online book rental service. As you can imagine with the economic downturn, it is an interesting time for his 16-month-old start-up business.
While many businesses have felt the ill effects of the recession, he has seen no slowdown in the demand for Paperspine’s services. In fact, the recession seems to be creating additional need for the online book rental service.
“Paperspine’s book rental model provides families with an extremely cost effective way to enjoy reading,” explains Hubbard. “New books are expensive. According to industry experts, many paperback books are priced between $10 to $20 a book. For just $9.95 to $24.95 a month for Paperspine services, a family can enjoy anywhere from two to five books at a time. When they’re finished reading the books, they simply mail them back to us using a pre-paid postage mailer.”
Paperspine allows people to do a lot of reading at a low cost – and can be a good alternative to going to the library, especially since so many of them are seeing tremendous increase in use due to the recession.
Hubbard continues “The shipping of books is free and the books can be returned whenever a person wants without the risk of late fees. Furthermore, Paperspine offers people a vast selection of books – there are more the 200,000 titles to choose – all from the comfort of your computer.”
According to Paula Laurita, coordinator of public services with the Athens-Limestone Public Library, the volume of people using the Athens-Limestone library is continuing to increase each month.
“We’ve have seen an increase of 118 percent in adults attending library programs from the last fiscal year,” explains Laurita. “All types of materials have seen an increase in circulation. Demand for books has increased, especially in the category of young adult books. For example, I have seven copies of “Twilight” and there are many, many more requests for the books.” Given this some people can expect to wait many months before they’ll receive it.
Melissa Liton, account director with Communiqué PR, adds, “As a long time library lover who recently has been frustrated with not being able to get the books I want, I’m definitely going to check out Paperspine’s service.”
Recently I have noticed that many journalists are writing about ways to cut expenses during this economically challenging time. People want to reduce their families’ costs without giving up their favorite activities, and as libraries become more tapped, it provides Dustin Hubbard and his team with a good opportunity to get the word out about Paperspine.