In a drunken haze last winter I purchased the URL “ThatBook.com” (not linked ’cause there’s nothing there) thinking it would come in handy some day as the Netflix model made its way to the bookstore. The problem of shipping back those heavy books and the desire to pad your shelves with your reading conquests doomed my plans, as any sober person could have told me.
Well, I’m happy to see that someone’s done something like NetFlix for books. I ran across (and clicked on!) an ad on Yahoo for zooba.com, a hybrid between the old book-of-the-month clubs and Netflix. Actually, it’s really just a BOTMC with a very nice web-interface. But still, they seemed to have really nailed the concept.
You make a “Reading list” of all the books you want. Every month they send you the top one on your list for $9.95, shipping included. That’s it. Very nice job, guys.
A little investigation showed that Zoomba is owned by Booksline.com, which is “brought to you by Bookspan“, which is, in fact, a partnership between DoubleDay and the Book of the Month Club.