Mishawaka warehouse fire damages books

A smoky fire set off sprinklers that damaged thousands of books stored in a Mishawaka warehouse.

[resident]

"The company collects donated textbooks from schools and libraries and uses the profits from sales to promote literacy programs. It was founded in 2000 by three University of Notre Dame students."

...is incorrect to the point of bad reporting.

This absolutely is a for-profit enterprise that donates a very small percentage of after tax profit to one or more charitable causes.

IMHO Better World Books is the bane of online bookselling, offering common books, poorly described, at absurdly high pricing, often one or two "zeros" higher than the individual book would be priced from other sources. If they hook a fish this way, it's easy profit, but wrecks the pricing curve for online booksellers and makes the potential customer even less confident about online buying.

[Katelin]

This article is misleading. This company does collect books from the places named but uses them for profit. The bare minimum amount of profit is used for literacy programs.

Better World Books is a known scam, using heart-string tugging buzzwords to get inventory for free and then donating a very small percentage of their vast profit to the organizations it professes to help. Altruism is the last virtue that should be applied here.

[Book buyer]

Huh. Interesting posts, but they don't match my experiences with Better World. I received 2 used books yesterday that I ordered from them through Amazon. They were 5 or 10 cents higher than another seller, not one or two zeros higher. They came to me promptly and were as described. Sour grapes from a competitor, perhaps?

[Kate]

I'm a librarian, and we send our discarded books to Better World Books. If not for BWB they would end up in the trash, instead we box them up and BWB pays the shipping for us to send them to them. Our library gets back some money from the sales of these items. Before BWB, these items would have ended up in a landfill and we would not have seen any money back on them. I think BWB is great.

[Commentator]

while it is always sad to hear of books being destroyed, this company has contributed significantly to the hard times that many professional bookdealers have experienced as a result of competition from ameteur and non-profits.
I can only offer a few crocodile tears.

[Katelin]

Both of the positive comments have come from the same state or city as Better World Books. This type of shill advertising is indicative of the way they do business.

[John]

The vast majority of the rubbish they peddle is just that, badly described, overpriced, and gives small independent booksellers a bad rap. Hopefully what was lost was this same crap. Their website is misleading - the numbers look great but the actual sums are tawdry and this for profit company is no one's friend but their own!

[Thom]

I don't know that BetterWorld is posting fake comments; of course the IndyStar website will have commenters from Indiana.

I don't see why I should trust a for-profit company just because it claims to be a "social venture." They're selling books you paid for with your library tax dollars. What fraction of profits is really going to charity? What fraction is being taken by the founders and investors? Their website conspicuously lacks this information...but it's heavy on the feel-good stories!

[hhhmmmmmm]

I think it is interesting that this article happens to have the highest percentage of 'out of state' comments I've ever seen here at the Star. Interesting that I don't really see these same people around the other articles. It makes me wonder about their motives, when they just show up to bash one company.

I've never bought from Better World Books, but it can't be that bad. These comments sound anti-business and anti-innovation to me. So they built a better mousetrap. Get over it!

[Andrew]

If out of state comments are suspect, how about out of country ones? I'm a Canadian with some involvement in the use book industry, and BWB indeed is not a positive contributor to the world of books. The crappy listings from BWB (and similar companies) has messed up many online book marketplaces, and the claim to social virtue is dubious.

[Jerome]

I have bought books in "good" condition from Better World Books and they were falling apart and moldy. The customer service was horrible.

[Kim]

Better World is a business not a charity. The charitable works are in place to work the system for cheap stock to give them a competitive edge. Id like to see how many cents in the dollar actually goes to the charitable programs to see how far the ethical boundaries are being pushed

[Georgina]

The detractors have a valid point about Better world books. Giving a small portion of your profits to charity in order to get free products seems a bit on the fraudulent side to me. Can I go around to farmers and tell them I'm going to donate their crops to charity for them, then sell the best produce on the open market and keep most of the profits for myself?

Kate, library books are bought with tax money. When they are discarded, they should be sold outright by the library and the money be put back into the system to help keep taxes low. The books shouldn't be given to a for-profit company. Surely, all of the books you send to them can't have been destined for landfill or this company wouldn't survive to pay your shipping costs. Maybe I'm naive, but this is the sort of thing that's likely to make taxpayers mad, like selling publicly financed highways to private toll companies.

[Bill]

Betterworld Books is most certainly committing a fraud against the entire college population and sorry to say miss librarian, libraries too. The collect and solicit books in the name of charity while all the while the books donated belong exclusively to Betterworld. No one who ever donated a book to one of their "partners" actually donated anything to a non-profit. Its illegal, fraudulent and perhaps the paper should conduct an investigation already. As for purchasing from them, whatever, its a book, if its poorly described why buy it? thats the same for anything you buy online. the point here is this is a fraudulent operation that takes advantage of well meaning students on campuses exposing those very students to be liable for fraud themselves, tax issues etc. Thats right, Betterworld is in effect paying for the books from the students collecting the books. Those very students represent that the "profits" will go back to a non-profit partner such as BFA. Instead, the money the books are sold to BWB for end up going into some students pocket and practically nothing ever gets to the charity.

For those who think they have done such a great thing because of the number of dollars given consider this. If Home Depot were to start soliciting for used tools in the name of charity and gave a pittance back per item that amounted to say 10 million dollars in local charity given while all the while making hundreds of millions on home improvement sales would that make them a social venture company, or just a company funded by the well meaning citizens that had been frauded?

[Brian]

I used to work there. It is a complete scam. I originally took the job thinking this would be a good place to work, but, alas, I was wrong. Only about 5% of each sale goes to the cause. The managers there are idiots that are just babysitters that complain if you don't produce enough. They say they have an open communications policy, but when I attempted to explain this to the C.O.O.- that the managers were micromanaging people - he told me that if I didn't like it I could quit. I guess he couldn't take a little criticism. Worst of all, I had the worst manager I have ever had at any company. His name is Rudy. He is a very pompous man. I actually had other managers come up to me and ask me to come to them with any problems I might have. He was so clueless that involving him just got him mad and frustrated. When he got in this mood he was impossible to work with. He'd go on a complaing spree at that point.(No, I'm not kidding. This guy actually pouted in this manner.) How he is part of the executive team is beyond me. God help him! If you have any questions, please feel free to ask. I promise you I will be as open and honest as possible.

[terry]

so do they actually mail you the books? i got an email for 2 seperate orders i placed saying that if i havnt recieved them by now they were lost in transit.

Brian wrote:

I used to work there. It is a complete scam. I originally took the job thinking this would be a good place to work, but, alas, I was wrong. Only about 5% of each sale goes to the cause. The managers there are idiots that are just babysitters that complain if you don't produce enough. They say they have an open communications policy, but when I attempted to explain this to the C.O.O.- that the managers were micromanaging people - he told me that if I didn't like it I could quit. I guess he couldn't take a little criticism. Worst of all, I had the worst manager I have ever had at any company. His name is Rudy. He is a very pompous man. I actually had other managers come up to me and ask me to come to them with any problems I might have. He was so clueless that involving him just got him mad and frustrated. When he got in this mood he was impossible to work with. He'd go on a complaing spree at that point.(No, I'm not kidding. This guy actually pouted in this manner.) How he is part of the executive team is beyond me. God help him! If you have any questions, please feel free to ask. I promise you I will be as open and honest as possible.

[Judy]

I'm very eager to know if this organization is scamming or not. I've ordered from them more than once with excellent results: books in good condition and exactly as advertised, very low prices and free shipping. I want to know what I'm really supporting, because as a customer I've been more than satisfied. BTW, Brian's complaints as a disgruntled employee may be entirely valid but hardly constitute evidence regarding the matter at hand unless he can speak to the 5% allegation with credibility. The rest is irrelevant.

[Judy]

P.S. I am from Pennsylvania and associated neither with BWB, a competitor nor a library. I'm just an avid reader.

[terry]

I did finally recieve my books from BWB and most were in good condition (out of 10 i ordered i have read 3 and one book had several missing pages) all in all i dont think they are actually a scam but they are a little misleading about thier donations. I looked into them a little more and they say themselves they only donate 5-10% of each sale.

Judy wrote:

I'm very eager to know if this organization is scamming or not. I've ordered from them more than once with excellent results: books in good condition and exactly as advertised, very low prices and free shipping. I want to know what I'm really supporting, because as a customer I've been more than satisfied. BTW, Brian's complaints as a disgruntled employee may be entirely valid but hardly constitute evidence regarding the matter at hand unless he can speak to the 5% allegation with credibility. The rest is irrelevant.

[John at BWB]

Better World Books is a for-profit social enterprise with a triple bottom line mission. This means that we seek to optimize the mix of social impact, environmental impact, and profitability. We contribute a significant portion of our gross margin to global literacy – typically 7-10% of our gross margin. This means 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, and we are better than carbon neutral as a company. To date we have raised over $6.4 million for our literacy partners, diverted over 25 million pounds of books from landfill, and achieved over 7,700 tons of carbon offsets through carbon neutral shipping.
But you can also verify this via an independent auditor. We are also a b-corporation which means an independent auditor has verified we meet transparent social and environmental performance standards (see http://www.bcorporation.net/ ). When you buy a book from Better World Books, you are indeed voting with your dollars for a better world.