b.book

Education, literacy and reading habits are directly linked to cognitive, social and economic developments. In Brazil, is considered that only 56% of the population read at least one book every three months. Also, 75% do not have full domain over reading, writing, and mathematical skills. Over than 60% survives with $260 a month.  In contrast, more than 70% uses online apps to make everyday life easier.

We present the possibility of a prosperous reading community by providing a C2C platform as a safe and commode way to rent books, making them more accessible, and stimulating the reading habit with interaction based on user’s interests.

Knowledge is the most relevant attribute in human evolution and making it accessible encourages people to get enlightened on social and political problems. We intend to strengthen the reading community all over the world with b.book and we encourage everyone to participate and make a difference.

Literacy and reading habits increase neural connections and stimulate creativity, critical thinking and empathy, due to the reader's immersion in the book’s universe. Besides the cognitive benefits of reading habits, social and economic rates can be improved with the dissemination of reading.

The explosion of knowledge and revolution in communication technology made the present generation to be exposed to an ocean of books, but the problem is in the selection of appropriate and suitable literature, which can help individuals and society at large.

The internet has spread in connections that have innovated the way we express ourselves, relate to each other and explore content. Networking, sharing values and stimulating the interaction between users, allows us to create bonds and trust, favoring the development of groups with common interests.

b.book is an environment where book owners and interested readers can interact and rent books for an agreed amount. Providing an economical, easy and safe way to offer, comfort and convenience in the delivery of books, evaluation of experiences and customization according to user interaction with the platform, we seek to encourage the habit of reading and provide the construction of new values and relationships.

We divided our main users as book owners and readers and they each have their own necessities.

The reader is anyone interested in renting a book. In addition to regular citizens, academics, students and other users who are interested in acquiring books for a predefined period of time are included. Among them, the main reasons why they not have a better reading habit are high prices, time spending in acquiring a book and the lack of variety and adherence to your interests.

The book owner is anyone who has acquired a book and is not using it. Could be a normal citizen who bought a book with an initial interest in their reading and not uses it anymore, such as could be a second-hand book store or a small publisher that has stored many units and want them to be more accessible to the public.

With b.book, book owners have the opportunity to gain some extra income with the guarantee of book return and readers can have easy access to books related with their interests. Besides, stimulating the user interaction with the platform and other users, we motivated the reading habits with a customized experience.

b.book is a new environent where book owners and readers can interact according to your interests. Allowing the rent of books that are no longer used in a quick and practical way, we provide more economical and comfortable access to readers. The rental books will be evaluated according to your actual state and will be related to your general information, price, location, content, ratings, and opinions of other users, seeking to facilitate readers' choices and increasing trust between related parties.

In our terms of use, rights and duties of book owners and readers are made explicit in order to guarantee deliveries and returns of books without impairing their quality. To rent a book, a reader must have a credit card linked to the platform. Any damages or delays will be debited from this card in order to repay the book owner.

Through the interaction of users with the platform and with each other, we seek to provide a customized environment according to their interests, recommending similarities, notifying them of news that is aligned with their content searches and exploring gamification for reading habits.

Mobile internet has made many communities as intertwined as never before and every day it is changing our society’s dynamic in a different way. Considering that most of the Brazilian population accesses the network through smartphones, we implement the business model through a mobile application. In this environment, we have the availability of tools such as user registration, link with credit cards, location and connection to databases.

The book market is not keeping up with the clients’ environment changes, especially in emerging and underdevelopment countries, where citizens live with a lower income and books are just too expensive. Our platform bridges that price gap by giving the interested readers a cheap and easy opportunity to read rental physical copies from closer book owners, making them more accessible.

Currently, there is no equivalent environment with the same tools as:

• Guarantee of return of the book.
• Ease of offer and acquisition.
• Interaction of the users aiming at the customization of the experience.

By allowing any book owner to rent any of their books, earning an extra with unused materials, we stimulate the offer on the platform. Services that contain large amounts of unused books, like second-hand bookstores and small publishers, could earn a week amount with them too. As a result, we provide accessibility and variety in book acquires by readers, who will be able to explore the offers according to their price, content and location interests.

Through the link of credit cards with the platform and the definition of delivery services, we provide convenience and safety in the use, as well as the preservation of the book.

Reading habits will be stimulated through the gamification of the platform, encouraging the reader to win read-conquests, and with discussion groups for users with the same reading interests. 

With the propagation of the use, data of book interests and availability can be used to provide a better experience and life-reader-style.

Since most of Brazilian population accesses the network through smartphones, we’ll implement our business model through a mobile application using Android Studio.

In this environment, we have availability of tools such as user registration, credit card API, GPS, connection to databases, among other features.

The data will be stored in a SQL server, created by us, being treated according to its variety and scalability

By customizing content with user interests, we encourage the application usage, in parallel to lower prices, besides increased variety and convenience in the purchase. 

Initially, we hope to spark reading interest in people, creating the habit of renting a book by adherence to price and content interests. In the long run, we hope to include this habit in the daily lives of people, giving access to knowledge and providing greater critical vision to society.

In addition to the benefits of the rent of books, any book owner can receive extra income from materials that were no longer used with the guarantee of book return in its initial state. We hope to spark the interest of users in shared economies, increasing trust and empathy among local communities.

By the rest of the year, we intend to make use of specific dates of academics calendar to motivate our users like the start of semesters and test weeks to faster expand among our initial community using class books the way to facilitate the exchange of biographies, sci-fiction or any kind of book. With the first contact with students, professors and employes in local universities, we expect that our local university community has around 50k people,  estimating 20k possible users on our platform.

By the first year, we want to expand the usage in every local community in the city of Sorocaba (SP/BR) that could benefit from our platform, making up to 250k possible users. With these numbers, logistics partnerships promote cheaper and commode access. 

Our use expansion will follow the available parameters: logistics, urban centers, and academic communities. In 5 years, we hope to fully understand users needs and interests, giving us the opportunity to start to assist local authors in the most popular and demanded categories.

With the use of the platform among users of different parts of the city, we will have our databases increasingly updated with usage profiles, preferences, regions and interests, allowing partnerships with logistics services, second-hand bookstores and small publishers.

With the expanding of the idea over the country, we will increase the quality of user experience, exploring AI tools to analyze their interests, and encourage the use of integration environments, such as social forums, in order to fully understand the user needs and preferences, increasing the adherence with their interests. Also, with that data, we can explore possible niches of catalogs with local authors. 

Initially, we have barriers that provide a low reading culture in the country. The lack of interest is related by readers with high prices, difficulties in acquiring a book and the lack of variety and adherence to your interests. Also, we can encounter certain resistance of book owners to rent your books on own platform, causing the unavailability of books.

Besides that, the transportation of the books would be another barrier, since we will be the ones, in the beginning, to do this, increasing the cost for each transaction.

With the attempt to expand in the nation, exploring the local authors for the production of the most popular and demanded genres, we may encounter some adversity from major publishers.

To overcome the lack of interest we will stimulate the use of the platform through the dissemination of books that are aligned with the interests of the user. If book owners do not make so many offers in order to meet a demand generated by the readers, we will seek partnerships with second-hand bookstores and small publishers with excesses of the most wanted units.

We hope to solve cases of adversity by partnering with these publishers to boost the dissemination of their books in the environment.

About the transportation, according to the increase of transactions per month, when the daily transaction exceeds two, the rate of the shipping cost will start to fall, this occurs because of the deliveries could be done in a day without needed to return to the start point, saving up gas and time for the deliveryman.

One person full-time staff and three people part-time staff.

Leonardo Lellis is an engineer and Master's student in Electrical Engineering from Unesp, with research in development robotics area, using artificial intelligence tools to incorporate human mental systems into analogous computational functions. Also organizes the largest robotics events in Latin America, with vision of the opportunities for improvement of education with inclusion of technologies.

Matheus Salles works with data analysis in a multinational, verifying the sustainable energy market in Latin America. He has experience in collecting and processing data, in the creation of dashboards and reports for high management. He was also an intern in the Marketing area, where he had experience with sales funnel and Storytelling process to attract clients. Matheus also had academic experiences with the treatment and analysis of the interests of large audiences. 

Lucas Camelo has an analytical profile that allows the refinement of our final product. During his graduation, he had several interpersonal experiences that collaborated in the construction of his professional profile, possessing great abilities of communication and persuasion. He was an intern in implementation at a national company leader in the private education sector. Currently, he dedicates himself integrally to the b.book, collaborating in the structuring, development and regularization of the project.

Guilherme Barbazza makes things happen and adjusts as needed, always bringing innovative topics to the business. Currently working with digital transformation within a large national company, he has experience with agile methodologies. 

Our platform allows book accumulators, who have purchased physical books and no longer use them for reading, and readers, motivated to read books available of interest for an agreed period and value, can interact securely.

Book accumulators will receive extra income from accumulated materials, and are subdivided into reader-buyers, who have acquired their books with an initial interest in their reading, but have ceased to use them; Second-hand bookstores, which have several units of books sold at a more affordable price, but with obstacles such as lack of convenience and product quality assurance; and small publishers, which have several units of books that have not been sold for not adhering to the interests of readers.

Among the readers, we find that the main causes for not having read more are the higher prices, the time spent and the lack of convenience in acquiring new books. We provide accessibility, agility and convenience when renting a book and receiving it at home, in addition to variety and adherence to interests through our forums of interaction.

We will collect a percentage of the amounts paid for renting books and fees for increased rental time, logistics included. Cheaper offers will be encouraged, providing a greater percentage of gain to the book's owner. The reader may request the extension of the delivery of his book for a fee that also benefits the owner of the book.

Initially, the university communities of Sorocaba will be focused, encouraging the use of the app to rent books at the beginning of the academic semester. As mentioned earlier, we have access to public reading and that uses smartphones of more than 20k people. Our biggest initial barrier is the high logistics costs involved in collecting and returning books. We hope to deal with regional demands by encouraging partnerships with local deliverers for greater user accessibility and convenience.

We will analyze the possible cities for expansion according to the availability of logistics and with communities with interest in reading.

How the search for books uses filters for content, distances and prices, we promote the customization of the platform by recommending books according to his preferences. By encouraging the use of the app forum, we promote the establishment of interest groups, connecting users of the same literary preferences.

The b.book is a startup created in Sorocaba / SP, Brazil.

We have a high scalability ever since we have overcome the logistic barriers.

We use the tools available on smartphones to provide convenience, accessibility and security in our platform.

The participation on Solve provides us the validation of our business model, having different views and criteria, receiving critics and suggestions for the improvement and growth of our company. The possibility of  contact with partners for logistics and dissemination increases our expectation in fast scalability of the business.

As new users join our platform and insert new books or search for books for rent, we update our databases and have a more detailed profile of regional reading habits.

With a contribution to the development of AI tools, we can use these databases to make the platform more responsive, adherent to the interests of users and helping the efficiency of logistics in the deliveries.

With the application of the tools, it is also possible to make more precise forecasts about the expansion and acceptance of the public, as well as to identify possible usage patterns for feedback of the recommendations given to users. These standards can also be used to verify the most accessed and requested contents, allowing us to look for possible suppliers that meet the demands. Besides that, these tools can also be used to calculate the best route that our deliveryman can do to delivery all the daily transactions.

Our main goal is to support communities in a meaningful way by sharing around a service that incentives the reading habits. Providing extra income for accumulated materials, encouraging the supply of books at low prices, making reading more accessible with transparent transactions through a responsive application for citizen feedback and ensuring the quality and preservation of the books, we hope to ensure that all citizens can overcome barriers of reading and access knowledge, promoting a change of habits and creating new values that promote a critical view of society.