I Love Readin' - An awesome book lending service startup

I usually do not write much. I mean, look at the last post in my blog. But I need to write about http://iloveread.in. Not because I want to win prizes, but i heard from the CEO of I Love Readin', Amrutash, that no one else has written about the service and felt the urge that I need to do something about it right away. They're in line for some well deserved - and pending - admiration and support.

I Love Readin' is a Netflix-model BDN (Books Distribution Network (I coined the term - just now!)) - its a startup founded by a bunch of IIT guys. In simple terms, a book-lending service, Netflix sshtyle - Borrow, Read, Return, Rinse-and-repeat. No, you don't have to rinse actually speaking...

I heard about I Love Readin' (ILR from now on - for brevity's sake) from my colleague Mrudhukar. He told me one day that one of his seniors is starting this company and it is about books, blah blah blah and sent me a link to Amrutash's post. I was instantly bought on to the idea cos just a few days ago I was googling for "library chennai" and found that all good libraries are too far from my home and was just about to give up.

ILR was exactly the kind of service/offering I was looking for because of the following reasons:

1. I love reading books (of various genres. Lately into history, economics, philosophy. Mostly non-fiction.)
2. I already have a collection of around 70-100 books on my shelves and my shelves have filled up, so I want to avoid buying more books.
3. I realized one day that, when it comes to non-fiction books, I read most of them only once and also I skip a few of the chapters that do not interest me. "So," I asked myself, "why should I pay for the book, read it once, that too not always fully, and let it collect dust forever in my shelves?"
4. I'm too lazy to go to the bookstore or library wade through the piles and racks of books and pick up good ones. I dunno, the Internet has made me really really lazy (online bank transfers, online tickets, online mobile bills payment, online photo-prints, online shopping). Besides, for me, a trip to a bookstore/library and back is half-a-day gone. Not too productive.
5. I hate reading pdfs and chms on my laptop. I have nearly given up on reading ebooks. These days, I read only excerpts of books online. (And piracy is bad - you know what i mean ;-).
6. I like the feel of the paper-book. Books are optimized for readability. And books are more compact and 'portable' than laptops and computers.
7. Amazon Kindle or a similar device/service has not yet launched in India. Even if they do, its going to be hellishly costly.

I became a member the first day ILR launched (23 Dec 2009) and I was their first (and happy too!) customer. I have already borrowed thee books from them till now: 2 initially - Argumentative Indian and One Hundred Years of Solitude. I'm just about to finish AI and have returned OHYS and have borrowed one today - The Ascent of Money.

Their 'customer-service' has been great so far. They've delivered at my office address and at my home address, wherever i wanted them at my convenience, and the books that I wanted. When the CEO delivers the books you had requested at your doorstep because other 'boys' weren't available, what more can a customer ask for - such promptness. All I see is an extremely motivated and focussed team at work here. Yeah, they still need to iron out a few wrinkles (the website, the subscription fees, the logistics), but hey, I'd still give it away to them heartily - they're doing a great job for a months-old startup.

The subscription fee is a little steeper than one might expect (at least than I expected), but think of all those ways in which you fritter your hard-earned money away. A large veg pizza costs you 150-200 bucks. A tub of popcorn at Satyam is around 50-80 bucks. A Ghee Masala Dosa at Swathi (Hotel Saravana Bhavan) is a whopping 120 bucks. Now you might ask why am i citing only examples of edible items, but hey, let us not digress (if you really want to, we can take that offline ;-). Anyway, coming back to our topic at hand, it will be money well spent if you 'investing' it on yourself - books, learning new things (music, martial arts, language), treks, travel etc. Even in terms of ROI, it made good sense to me to become a member (quarterly subscription - Rs. 700) because of the following reasons:

1. A good book costs Rs. 300 on average. Being the slow reader that I am, even if i finish a book at a pace of 1 per month, the quarterly subscription of Rs. 700 would have gotten me Rs. 900 worth of books. And thats the worst case. You'll obviously get better returns if you go for extended subscription periods. Or if you finish book faster (ideally like Swami Vivekananda - who used to devour books at the rate of 1 per day as I read somewhere. Of course, the content, not the book itself. Its a PJ, btw, if you didn't get it).
2. Because this is similar to a library, I'll be forced to promptly do my reading so that I can make the most out of my subscription (and believe me, its a pretty good motivational factor, although the I Love Readin' guys allow you to keep the book for as long as you want).
3. I can cut down on the commute to those libraries.

Go checkout their site! And if you're excited about the service, become members and start readin'! Fall in love with books again (if you have broken up with books or reading, that is :-)!

If you're convinced and you feel the subscription charge is too high, you can always ask them for lower prices. If a lot of people urge them to get cheaper, there's a good chance they will do so.