
Apply HN: Database of Used Books for Sharing (Developing Countries) - marco_guate
This will be like a couchsurfing for books or the catalog of hundreds of personal-libraries together, in places where there are no libraries or bookstores. This can later become what  Amazon was at the beginning, a marketplace for books, that handles payments and shipping, but at the beginning, it will only be sharing.
Knowledge is key for development, and people know it. Thousands of people in developing countries are paying high amounts of money for private education. After Amazon and kindle, it may be weird for many of you to think about books, but they are still a reality, and will be for at least the next 10 years. They are particularly expensive in developing countries because they are printed somewhere else, so prices have extra shipping and import taxes on top.
Highly efficient database, just text (like Hacker News), will allow parents, college students, and professionals exchange books. 
Business Model: Still working on it, but it will be for profit. (v1.0) Maybe subscriptions that will help the safety factor, plus selling advertisement. (v2.0)Online market place. Right now credit cards companies are being ridiculous in Guatemala so don´t know a way to work with them at the moment. We´d have to find another way to manage payments. A couple of Guatemalan payment startups are “starting” right now. Maybe we can work with them in the future
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marco_guate
So Johnny will find the book Harry Potter or certain math book he needs for
school, which is owned by someone down the street. So he needs to contact the
owner to meet him and get the book from him for free (or in exchange for
another book). Johnny will have to pay us to get the owner´s contact info.

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xavierwjc
Cool idea, the importance of libraries can't be overstated. So it would be
great to have an alternative to robust public library infrastructure in
developing countries.

With that being say, you really need to hammer out how to create a sustainable
business model. Just off the top of my head, the transaction cost is going to
kill it before it get off the ground.

1\. Who's going to pay for high shipping cost? (especially in developing
countries where the infrastructure will cause you problems)

2\. Who will pay for content cost? (cost of acquiring books not to mention
later on acquiring users)

3\. How will you build your margin on top of all that cost?

Until you "solve" these problems, I don't know if this is an investable idea.

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xavierwjc
After thinking about it, it might be better to go with non-profit route. Get
all books donated (ideally from first world where the donation can be apply to
tax deduction). Network with church groups where they can pay for the initial
shipping cost to your countries. This solves the cost of content acquisition.

Once you get hold of the books, add them to your market place and allow anyone
to pick up the books for free. If someone else wants to read that book, they
make a request on the market place then it's the responsibility of the current
book holder to decide whoever is on that waitlist. Ideally someone close by
and who has higher needs. This solves the problem of shipping cost since it's
up to the users to share them amongst themselves. The market place keep track
of the supply/demand and can make suggestions.

You can do more complicated interactions when the system has more users. Like
if a remote village has need for a list of books and a user is scheduled to
pass through that village. The marketplace can facilitate all nearby
bookholders who have books on the waitlist for that village to give books to
that person travelling.

By cutting out "all" of the transaction cost, you can focus on value added
services where you can add margin (profit). For example, allow publishers to
give out new books in circulation. Newspapers, political ads from politicians,
ads flyers from local businesses etc. stuff that readers might want and don't
mind sharing. If users don't want the ads/services, they can trash them.
Otherwise, pass them on. Interesting way of measuring success of x campaign.
Use the money you make from those services to buy more books and expand
network or subsidize the network to reach more communities!

That would be a nonprofit that I won't mind donate to.

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marco_guate
Couple of issues with that: -Very few developed nations read in Spanish.
Donation books in other languages are usually just trashed. -Getting this huge
amounts of books would be indeed crazy. -So books will stay at owners homes.
Because there are books in developing countries. We´re not necessarily looking
into getting more. We just want to have them shared so they can all be read
10-20 times, instead of just 1 or 0 times.

Yes, I´ve been evaluating the non-profit way, especially because it could be
easier to get donations, but I want it o be sustainable. Seems like everything
that gets donation money becomes inefficient.

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pjlegato
How will you physically move the books? Many countries in your target market
have unreliable and expensive postal systems, where packages are frequently
"lost".

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marco_guate
You are right, so we won´t ship them. We´ll do regional groups, people will
meet in used book stores (who will pay us to be centers), or their
school/campus library.

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kafkaesq
_It may be weird for many of you to think about books, but they are still a
reality, and will be for at least the next 10 years._

My hope (and my prediction) is that real (paper) books will prove to be far
more resilient than people think at the moment, and will be with us far longer
than that (albeit in somewhat limited volume compared to their current peak).

Either way, this sounds potentially awesome ways I don't quite have time to
articulate right now. And the fact that you're starting out Guatemala, even
more son.

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marco_guate
Ja ja, cool, thanks.

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nkzednan
slightly related:
[https://littlefreelibrary.org/](https://littlefreelibrary.org/)

