6 ms·

Better World Books has in my experience been purposefully misleading about the structure and purpose of their business. They put book donation boxes everywhere

by jjeaff 7y ago

Better World Books has in my experience been purposefully misleading about the structure and purpose of their business. They put book donation boxes everywhere that are covered in "save the children" style graphics and messages. But the reality is, they are a for profit company that very much enriched the owners while donating a very small percentage to charity. And it's one thing to have a corporation that does social good. But their entire business is based on receiving donated books from people who think they are donating to charity. They also make deals with public libraries to sell their books online and take a big cut. Which makes me suspicious of this new arrangement. So it is now a for profit corporation owned by a non-profit? Did the owners decide to reorganize or donate the whole business or something?

ryana 7y ago
As a prior BWB employee (with no equity or outcome from this sale) I'm happy to respond to some of these concerns. "Very much enriched the owners" is quite a stretch. Especially considering pretty much every equity holder was wiped out ~5 years ago when they had to raise money to stay in business. The CEO lives in a house in central Indiana that costs less than the average 1BR condo in San Francisco. Before that he lived in a townhome in suburban Atlanta. This business is not and never has thrown off cash. At best they've made as much money in profit as they've donated, in cash, to literacy causes over the life of the business. A "very small percentage" donated to charity is up for debate based on everyone's belief of what that means, but all charity payments were made as a percentage of net sales revenue, which was essentially the money that came in from any sale. The only cost that was subtracted out was marketplace fees when selling on Amazon, ebay, etc. Sales percentage back to the book sources (academic and public libraries) and non-profit partners (on all sales from all sources) were paid out before shipping costs were even accounted for. "Their entire business is based on receiving donated books from people who think they are donating to charity" is not true. Drop box books accounted for < 10% of all books sourced and even less than that of revenue since those books are typically the lowest quality stream (slightly better title mix than thrift purchases, but much higher logistics cost and risk of spoilage). The business is almost entirely dependent on public and academic library partnerships. There were many, MANY monthly all hands meetings we sat in where the business lost money but wrote 6 or 7 figure checks to literacy partners. Donations were not a function of making money. BWB was a great company full of people who truly cared about the mission. Some people did well, but nobody got rich off this business. If they didn't move most of the corporate activity out of Atlanta and up to Indiana I would still have been happy to keep working there.
- rwmurrayVT 7y ago
  Do you know any one at Jenson Books or who the owner might be :) That's the biggest mystery from my entire time selling books on Amazon. They're by far and away the most frustrating seller in the marketplace. I truly despise them. They can't POSSIBLY make money on so much of their inventory without lower negotiated FBA rates from Amazon. It's not just a few like with BWB, but over 75% of their inventory seems entirely unreasonable to sell at their market price.
- jjeaff 7y ago
  >The CEO lives in a house in central Indiana that costs less than the average 1BR condo in San Francisco. So your evidence that one of the founders didn't make a lot of money is that he owns a million dollar home in central indiana? A $1m home in the midwest is going to be very, very nice and probably an order of magnitude more expensive than the average home in the area ($148k in Indiana). But that is good to hear that they really are donating money. Because their huge "Donate books here" boxes are very misleading.
sedachv 7y ago
BWB is also the only online bookseller that seems incapable of delivering their orders consistently. I have given up trying to order from them.
- jjgreen 7y ago
  I've ordered quite a few from them (novels, maths textbooks, ...) and never had an order cancelled. :-/
- ckrusk 7y ago
  do they cancel your order or take forever to deliver?
  - m0xte 7y ago
    Cancel order after about 4-5 days from experience. Had it on several books!
    - sedachv 7y ago
      Order cancellations here as well, after books have been sent out and returned as undeliverable. Have not ever had that happen with any other shipment to my address, so I suspect they have a recurring issue with label printing. Their customer support just ignored me when I brought that up (several times) and issued a refund without any explanation.
- mindcrime 7y ago
  Interesting... I've bought probably two dozen books from them over the past couple of years (via their Amazon storefront) and I've never had a problem with them.
- sitkack 7y ago
  You should try Thrift Books they also offer inconsistency as a service.
  - 7y ago
IfOnlyYouKnew 7y ago
According to their website, they have donated $28,000,000 and 26,000,000 books. These seem to be separate activities, i. e. the money is straight-up cash given independently of the donation of books. I'm not sure if that fits with your characterisation as "a very small percentage". They don't seem to publish profit numbers, making this somewhat unanswerable. But having read the press release and website, I did no get the impression that this was necessarily a non-profit. There are dozens of "free shipping", "sale", "save", "bargain" claims, and barely any of do-goodery (the name, plus those donation numbers at the very bottom). "Non-profit" is mentioned nowhere on their site, and they characterise themselves as a "social venture", a term that means exactly what they are.
- jjeaff 7y ago
  They may have cleaned up their act some. But this is what their "donation" boxes used to look like: https://www.alamy.com/book-and-clothing-donation-bins-in-a-sarasota-shopping-plaza-image61362024.html https://www.alamy.com/book-and-clothing-donation-bins-in-a-s... Notice they say, "Donate books here". But you aren't donating. That's a total lie. Any more than giving free merchandise to Walmart is "donating it" because walmart gives to charity every year. No one goes directly to their website. They sell primarily on 3rd party sites, so they probably decided to clean up the site a bit. I remember it being much more misleading in the past. I'm sure you could look on the wayback machine. As for the large number of books given away, that is simply a cheap way for them to get rid of the books that are worthless. Otherwise, they would have to pay to have them hauled off. And you'll also notice that they don't say they have "donated" $26m to charity. They say they have raised $26m for charity. Not sure what that means, but it sounds more like they are soliciting donations from others. Maybe they are providing matching funds in some cases or maybe they are just organizing donation programs. Also, that number is the amount raised since 15+ years ago. They have annual sales estimated around $75m a year. So $26m lifetime is rather small.
kps 7y ago
In the past, they prominently offered ‘free worldwide shipping’ but silently changed their prices according to the incoming IP. (This has now been fixed, possibly because they did ship orders placed in the US at the US-disclosed prices.)
jrochkind1 7y ago
Hmm. Especially knowing that being a nonprofit is one of the things that will support your claim to being a "library" as far as the parts of the copyright code that give libraries special rights to copy things others don't have (which is part of what the IA relies on)... now I'm suspicious too.
skybrian 7y ago
Yes, it's suspicious and I have questions. But it's also plausible that it's all legit. People who donate books often overestimate what their books are worth. Selling the books and using the money to fund the library (which can buy books it actually wants) might be more efficient than paid staff handling a bunch of books they mostly don't want. What's the expense on doing the work themselves, and can outsourcing beat that? Also, it seems like people who donate stuff have lots of other illusions about how much good they're really doing, and the people actually doing the work will entertain those illusions, but they have to deal with reality. Personally, I'm fine with anyone who takes stuff I don't want off my hands for free with no hassle.

by jjeaff 7y ago

ryana 7y ago

As a prior BWB employee (with no equity or outcome from this sale) I'm happy to respond to some of these concerns. "Very much enriched the owners" is quite a stretch. Especially considering pretty much every equity holder was wiped out ~5 years ago when they had to raise money to stay in business. The CEO lives in a house in central Indiana that costs less than the average 1BR condo in San Francisco. Before that he lived in a townhome in suburban Atlanta. This business is not and never has thrown off cash. At best they've made as much money in profit as they've donated, in cash, to literacy causes over the life of the business. A "very small percentage" donated to charity is up for debate based on everyone's belief of what that means, but all charity payments were made as a percentage of net sales revenue, which was essentially the money that came in from any sale. The only cost that was subtracted out was marketplace fees when selling on Amazon, ebay, etc. Sales percentage back to the book sources (academic and public libraries) and non-profit partners (on all sales from all sources) were paid out before shipping costs were even accounted for. "Their entire business is based on receiving donated books from people who think they are donating to charity" is not true. Drop box books accounted for < 10% of all books sourced and even less than that of revenue since those books are typically the lowest quality stream (slightly better title mix than thrift purchases, but much higher logistics cost and risk of spoilage). The business is almost entirely dependent on public and academic library partnerships. There were many, MANY monthly all hands meetings we sat in where the business lost money but wrote 6 or 7 figure checks to literacy partners. Donations were not a function of making money. BWB was a great company full of people who truly cared about the mission. Some people did well, but nobody got rich off this business. If they didn't move most of the corporate activity out of Atlanta and up to Indiana I would still have been happy to keep working there.

rwmurrayVT 7y ago
Do you know any one at Jenson Books or who the owner might be :) That's the biggest mystery from my entire time selling books on Amazon. They're by far and away the most frustrating seller in the marketplace. I truly despise them. They can't POSSIBLY make money on so much of their inventory without lower negotiated FBA rates from Amazon. It's not just a few like with BWB, but over 75% of their inventory seems entirely unreasonable to sell at their market price.
jjeaff 7y ago
>The CEO lives in a house in central Indiana that costs less than the average 1BR condo in San Francisco. So your evidence that one of the founders didn't make a lot of money is that he owns a million dollar home in central indiana? A $1m home in the midwest is going to be very, very nice and probably an order of magnitude more expensive than the average home in the area ($148k in Indiana). But that is good to hear that they really are donating money. Because their huge "Donate books here" boxes are very misleading.

sedachv 7y ago

BWB is also the only online bookseller that seems incapable of delivering their orders consistently. I have given up trying to order from them.

jjgreen 7y ago
I've ordered quite a few from them (novels, maths textbooks, ...) and never had an order cancelled. :-/
ckrusk 7y ago
do they cancel your order or take forever to deliver?
- m0xte 7y ago
  Cancel order after about 4-5 days from experience. Had it on several books!
  - sedachv 7y ago
    Order cancellations here as well, after books have been sent out and returned as undeliverable. Have not ever had that happen with any other shipment to my address, so I suspect they have a recurring issue with label printing. Their customer support just ignored me when I brought that up (several times) and issued a refund without any explanation.
mindcrime 7y ago
Interesting... I've bought probably two dozen books from them over the past couple of years (via their Amazon storefront) and I've never had a problem with them.
sitkack 7y ago
You should try Thrift Books they also offer inconsistency as a service.
- 7y ago

IfOnlyYouKnew 7y ago

According to their website, they have donated $28,000,000 and 26,000,000 books. These seem to be separate activities, i. e. the money is straight-up cash given independently of the donation of books. I'm not sure if that fits with your characterisation as "a very small percentage". They don't seem to publish profit numbers, making this somewhat unanswerable. But having read the press release and website, I did no get the impression that this was necessarily a non-profit. There are dozens of "free shipping", "sale", "save", "bargain" claims, and barely any of do-goodery (the name, plus those donation numbers at the very bottom). "Non-profit" is mentioned nowhere on their site, and they characterise themselves as a "social venture", a term that means exactly what they are.

jjeaff 7y ago
They may have cleaned up their act some. But this is what their "donation" boxes used to look like: https://www.alamy.com/book-and-clothing-donation-bins-in-a-sarasota-shopping-plaza-image61362024.html https://www.alamy.com/book-and-clothing-donation-bins-in-a-s... Notice they say, "Donate books here". But you aren't donating. That's a total lie. Any more than giving free merchandise to Walmart is "donating it" because walmart gives to charity every year. No one goes directly to their website. They sell primarily on 3rd party sites, so they probably decided to clean up the site a bit. I remember it being much more misleading in the past. I'm sure you could look on the wayback machine. As for the large number of books given away, that is simply a cheap way for them to get rid of the books that are worthless. Otherwise, they would have to pay to have them hauled off. And you'll also notice that they don't say they have "donated" $26m to charity. They say they have raised $26m for charity. Not sure what that means, but it sounds more like they are soliciting donations from others. Maybe they are providing matching funds in some cases or maybe they are just organizing donation programs. Also, that number is the amount raised since 15+ years ago. They have annual sales estimated around $75m a year. So $26m lifetime is rather small.

kps 7y ago

In the past, they prominently offered ‘free worldwide shipping’ but silently changed their prices according to the incoming IP. (This has now been fixed, possibly because they did ship orders placed in the US at the US-disclosed prices.)

jrochkind1 7y ago

Hmm. Especially knowing that being a nonprofit is one of the things that will support your claim to being a "library" as far as the parts of the copyright code that give libraries special rights to copy things others don't have (which is part of what the IA relies on)... now I'm suspicious too.

skybrian 7y ago

Yes, it's suspicious and I have questions. But it's also plausible that it's all legit. People who donate books often overestimate what their books are worth. Selling the books and using the money to fund the library (which can buy books it actually wants) might be more efficient than paid staff handling a bunch of books they mostly don't want. What's the expense on doing the work themselves, and can outsourcing beat that? Also, it seems like people who donate stuff have lots of other illusions about how much good they're really doing, and the people actually doing the work will entertain those illusions, but they have to deal with reality. Personally, I'm fine with anyone who takes stuff I don't want off my hands for free with no hassle.