Hey, we could have a business! Check out my idea: http://www.whynot.net/ideas/3201

I thought about the book-rental thing, but first, there is one: booksfree.com

Secondly, books aren't all the same weight, which would make postage difficult (vs. DVDs). Would the price of a huge art book be the same as a small paperback?

this could just get me to try out this "reading" thing

Wow, I was thinking along those lines as well. However, the postage issue kept coming up. My initial thought would be to limit the selection to smaller/lighter books, but there goes the advantage over standard brick and mortar libraries. In the end, I think some kind of agreement would have to be worked out with USPS highlighting average shipping weights per customer, etc.

Great idea. I would definitely sign up for this. I don't think shipping will be a big problem since it would only be a couple bucks per book.

You both stole my idea! Netflix for books... queue and all... perfect for vacations and for keeping track of the good books your friends who aren't in business school are reading.

Working off the successful Netflix model is smart, but isn't this what libraries are for?

What about just putting all the text on a website and giving people access codes

I like it

Great idea! Being done RIGHT now by BookSwim.com. It's online book rental, just like NetFlix. Okay, okay.. you caught me. I'm one of the founders. The good news is we're launching REAL soon! (1-1.5 months)

We'd LOVE your feedback on all this. Add yourself to our mailing list for updates.

Didn't know about BookSwim, but I belong to both BookMooch and PaperBackSwap which coordinate book swapping between readers.

Public libraries could do this for a small fee. win-win. The downside is the real cost of a damaged DVD for NETFLIX is about a dime, but the book is much more expensive to replace.

The strong disadvantage here that public libraries have is that they are not really the place to go to get hot new titles or the obscure neat things.

I'm actually developing an idea right now for a private library, run in the hipster part of town, perhaps stocked by temporarily donated private collections (store your books with us and make money doing so, like with a savings account). Hot title acquisition set to high priority, decent buyback of new books when they're still new, old and tired freebie rotation, coffeeshop and community board, couches. Anyone who donates his book collection has his or her entire collection posted somewhere, so he or she can show off how well-read and cultured they are (tell me people wouldn't jump all over the chance to show that off; I sure as hell would).

I'd been discussing things like this with my friend for a while and he reminded me that the primary reason Netflix is so damn brilliant is that shipping costs for the disks are nothing; shipping costs seriously undermine the profit margin here. The cheapest thing would be media mail (I think), and that is awfully slow.

Not that it's impossible! And I certainly support this very cool idea :)

Yeah, see, now part of me wants to post that above idea separately...

Awesome idea!!! I would totally use this type of service. I don't have time to go to a library when it's open (I'm usually working during those hours) and am constantly looking for something to read.

it's already done. Go to google and type in netflix for books it hsould come up

This would be a great idea if everyone treated their books the same way, but there will always be people who need/want to underline passages or highlight pages or just dog-ear their place when they don't have a bookmark. These people most likely prefer to have their own books and would not subscribe to this service, but some probably would and it would be hard to maintain the quality of the collection over time.