Leave a Comment »

Trackback | RSS 2.0

1. Theresa - July 2, 2009

You guys are the biggest scam artists that I’ve ever seen… You should also try putting some money into your crappy customer service department. And by the way, you’re lying about your “commitment” to literacy programs. You have people donate on the false pretext that the books are going to be shipped over to needy kids in Africa but you really just sell them and give a SMALL percentage of the profit to the actual programs. Shame on you for lying and using these children for your false advertising and your greedy money hungry desires.

2. Holden Bonwit - July 2, 2009

I love that Theresa criticizes the $6M that you’ve given away, without disclosing how much she’s given away.

I also love that you keep books out of landfills, created a few hundred jobs, and showed that social entrepreneurship can be profitable.

3. Izabel - July 2, 2009

I don’t care what this Theresa says. You’re the best! All the books I ordered arrived much faster (and cheaper, of course) than if I had bought them at any other online store. Your customer service excels! And the social contribution you give is wonderful (you’re even here in Brazil!). So keep up with the great work, guys! Congratulations!

4. Daria Artem - July 2, 2009

Congratulations- you have a wonderful business just heard about you on CNN and will be ordering books from you soon! Keep it up! It’s brilliant!

5. John - July 2, 2009

Theresa – we are certainly not perfect, and a small percentage of our customers do experience a customer service glitch. If this happened to you, please accept our apologies. You may contact me directly for resolution of your problem at john at betterworldbooks dot com. For perspective though, we do have a 97% positive seller rating on Amazon from 585,000 reviews (the most of any seller on Amazon) and a 99.6% positive rating on Half.com from 285,000 reviews.

We claim that we convert books donated into cash which then goes to our non-profit literacy partners. If you can point me to where you see an alternative claim, I would like to correct it. It is a side benefit that we have actually directly sent 1.3 million college textbooks to Africa, but this is not our primary business.

We do provide about 10% of our revenues to our non-profit literacy partners. For context, consider Target Corp., a best-in-class C Corporation when it comes to charitable giving. It donates 5% of its pre-tax profit to charity. In order to meet the bar we set of donating 10% of revenues, Target would have to donate 196% of its pre-tax profit to charity. We pay our literacy partners regardless of whether we are profitable and before we take any profit. We aim to maintain high single-digit social profit and to achieve high single-digit shareholder profit.

6. Ibrahim Birgeoglu - July 2, 2009

I saw it on CNN as well! Great prices on textbooks! Forget about the 31 million this year, that number is going up because of the exposure. I already posted this site on facebook and I hope my friends get their books from here too.

Keep it up John and BWB!

7. Peter - July 2, 2009

Libraries should be donating their unwanted books to the residents of the communities that support them financially, NOT to a private business that turns the books into private profits and gives nothing to the libraries that collected the books.
If the books have enough value to be listed for sale on the internet, then they will be of use to someone in the libraries’ local communities and should be either given away to the locals or given to the nearest library that holds a Friends of the Library book sale.

8. Ward - July 2, 2009

Now i know why i can’t find anything good at my “friends of the library”. Now i have no choice but buy them off line, with the high cost of shipping it sucks. It’s a scam to think that much of the money goes to help literacy.

You have made a monster, hope the libraries find out the truth before they sign sign contracts.

9. John Richards - July 3, 2009

Hey Peter and Ward enough of the anger! BWB does gift book to libraries! The libraries just happen to be in poor countries that can’t afford books. And BW Books has raised $6.5 million for Global Literacy and saved 25,150 001 from land fills. When you buy a book from BW Books you help with these programmes. For $15 you can get 5 books and the postage in the US is FREE. Powell’s charged me $7 + $6 freight just for 1 book. I recently bought 6 books from BW Books, and because I am an overseas customer it cost me $24 freight for the 6 books, but I had them within a week. Great service. Come on people, get on the page!

10. Patrick from Argentina - July 13, 2009

You guys should put this video on your YouTube channel so that more people can watch it. You’re great, keep up the awesome.

11. Adam - October 17, 2009

Peter and Ward–I’ve worked in libraries, so give BWB a break. For the price of shipping in getting rid of old books, libraries are quite happy to have the shelves free for new titles. Both public and college libraries routinely get rid of books that are in slight or no demand. Ever been to a library book sale? Public libraries depend on public funds for operation of facility and acquisitionis of new titles, so shelf space is in high demand and funds for expansion of facilities are non-existant. Public libraries don’t have the funds to add shelf space in order to bring in all the new titles patrons demand, titles that get more borrowers and keep the need for public libraries alive. Imagine if a public library didn’t have twenty copies of the newest hit like Harry Potter. Even with twenty copies, the wait list for such in-demand books can be as much as a month long if a borrower is lucky.
University libraries suffer from the same dilemma and public libraries. What books can they keep in order to free up space in a finite facility for new titles? If spending $5 for a book isn’t worth the cost, then the book seems unimportant or without much demand. If it’s a specialty book, chances are BWB is one of the few places you can get it. Spending 10, 20, or 50 bucks for a hard to find title is usually a steal. Try pricing things based on the cost of a new book or compare the used book market at places like Half.com, Ebay, Amazon, etc. BWB is usually the best price and a reasonable price to pay. How ever little 5% sounds like in donation, that is a large donation in either money or books. If it goes to third world coutries, so much the better. Ever try to find a book in Kenya or rural Peru? Literacy in third world countries is apalingly low by the standards of the US where almost everyone can read from a young age. Books to foreign countries raises literacy rates and encourages education in all. It’s a good thing.

12. Samantha - October 22, 2009

Some people obviously have no idea of the roadblocks that stand in your way of donating books locally.

I wish I had known of BWB when my grandmother passed. The nursing home and hospitals would not take her books because they couldn’t take used books because of health dept regulations. The library system did not want them. The local (for profit) used book store did not think the majority of the titles were current enough to sell. Our Goodwill stopped taking books because they had too many and they did not sell well enough to justify the space they took up. I couldn’t afford to ship them somewhere on my own.

I was left with the recycle bin, or going through a tiring process of listing on ebay or some such.

BWB certainly fills a need for some. Donating your books is always a personal choice. If this one isn’t right for you, no one is telling you that you have to give BWB a thing, so why the hostility? Because they make a profit? It says so on the front page of the site…

13. Michael - November 7, 2009

Hello Better World Books,

I noticed your drop box in my University last week, and was very happy to see it. Earlier this year, I began a community-wide effort to change the Waterloo Region District School Board’s wasteful book-disposal policy. (search “Citizens for Saving School Books” on facebook) Though the policy was modified so as to accomodate the possibility of charity donations etc, we are perpetually in search of new organizations who could benefit. Please contact me.