Introducing bookstep.com where you can rent digital text books for a specific duration of time, a term (180 days) or an year. The amount that you pay as rent is commensurate with the duration that you have selected. Not only this, the duration that you have been reading a book is calculated by the amount of time that you have actually spent reading that title on their website. So say you decide to rent a book for 3 hours and after reading the book for an hour you feel tired. All you have to do is press the "Stop" button for that book. At a later time you can login to your Bookstep account and then read that same book for 2 more hours. How good is that?
Bookstep works for both students as well as instructors/publishers. Students can select the textbook or course-ware relevant to them and while reading make annotations (like highlighting text or take notes on specific sections etc.) in the interface provided on Bookstep. If they want they can sell the annotations in the future to other students on Bookstep as further study aid. Instructors/Publishers can publish their content at no cost on Bookstep and decide on whether to make the content accessible at no cost to Bookstep readers or to use a paid subscription model. This creates a win-win situation for all.
Here we interview Max Basaraba, the site’s founder and CEO to tell us about the concept and their plans for the future. Catch his exclusive interview with us below:
1. Max, please introduce yourself to e-junkie’s readers.
Max Basaraba – founder and chief executive officer of Bookstep.com.
2. What is the concept behind bookstep.com ?
The concept behind Bookstep is to let students pay the lowest price possible for textbooks. Bookstep lets students control textbooks prices by paying for only the time they spend reading. We are #1 in digital textbooks on-demand. Most of our pay-as-you-go readers pay less than 30% of the actual textbook cost.
3. What was the source of inspiration for starting bookstep.com ?
Our inspiration for digital textbook rentals was the effect of high textbook costs on students and inability of the market players to effectively respond to the problem. We want to empower students by giving them a choice of how much to pay for textbooks rather than prescribing the high-priced course materials to them.
4. What were some of the difficulties that you faced in getting bookstep.com up and running?
Selecting the right team of people who could share the vision of Bookstep as a studentcentered, low-cost textbook hub was perhaps the most challenging task. Thankfully, we were able to attract top industry experts who worked tirelessly to develop the concept and getBookstep up and running. We are lucky to have such a strong team now, one that can overcome any difficulty on the way to empowering students with a convenient and costeffective textbook solution.
5. What are the various ways that a user can use bookstep.com ? Can you explain what you mean by "Prepay for the Term"? Will bookstep.com result in substantial savings to an avid
reader?
College students can access all needed textbooks on Bookstep in three different ways.They can access on-demand and pay as they read, prepay for access for an entire term (180 days) or subscribe for annual access (365 days). While Bookstep accommodates every learning and teaching style, we ensure substantial savings to all of our users (including avid readers) by guaranteeing that they won’t overpay for their textbooks. Because of our unique access on-demand offering, all of our users can substantially save on their textbooks. Here’s the link which explains the three ways readers can use bookstep.com –www.bookstep.com/howitworks.
6. What are the types of books that are on offer at bookstep.com ? Do you plan to expand the repertoire and number of books on bookstep.com?
Bookstep is a content-agnostic textbook platform that offers two types of textbooks:
- Traditional textbooks (those that are published by the textbook publishers like McGraw Hill and Pearson), and
- Open source textbooks, or those that are published by self-publishing authors, open source content providers like Connexions (cnx.org), and various foundations that support low-cost textbooks.
- We are working on increasing our textbook availability through both of these channels, and we welcome all content providers to participate on our platform.
7. How would you differentiate bookstep.com from other services like Kno.com or Chegg.com?
Bookstep delivers a very simple message: Don’t pay the full price for textbooks that you will most likely need only to pass your course. Pay your own, low price by accessing textbooks on demand. I believe no other current textbook offering does that.
Bookstep is here to empower students by letting them choose how much to pay for textbook materials instead of telling them a price they have to pay.
8. What are the future plans for bookstep.com ?
The future plans for Bookstep are to expand our operations to more colleges and universitieswhile staying true to our mission of helping students always save on their textbooks and never overpay.
9. What is the fondest memory that you have of the process of conceiving bookstep.com to having it up and running?
That’s a tough call. I'd have to say my top three are the nights spent designing Bookstep, the days running its operations, and the weekends working with the team on our marketing strategy.
10. Keeping your experience in perspective what advice would you give to an aspiring entrepreneur entering the world of eCommerce?
Stay innovative and don’t be afraid to disrupt large industries such as textbooks, in our case.
Thank you Max for taking the time for this interview. We wish Bookstep all the success in the future. :)
Bookstep.com
