Better World Books is an online bookseller that collects books through donations and sells them online or donates them to literacy organizations. It helps keep books out of landfills and uses proceeds to support literacy initiatives worldwide. As of late 2009, it had plans to expand overseas, start a book rental service, and achieve $75 million in revenue by 2012, while maintaining its social mission through practices like shared ownership with employees and nonprofit partners.

1. INTRODUCTION OF BETTER WORLD BOOKS
The case examines the business model of Better World Books (BWB), the US based online bookseller.
Founded in 2002, the company collected old and new books from individuals, booksellers, recyclers,
libraries and colleges. Apart from donations, libraries and colleges also sold old books to BWB. BWB
either donated the collected books to the organizations promoting literacy or sold them online. By
donating and selling used books, BWB helped to keep away millions of pounds of paper waste from
landfills. The books that did not sell were recycled. BWB also had a Carbon Neutral Shopping Cart,
through which, the company collected two to five cents on the cost of each book from every customer at
the 'Checkout' link on its website. The collected money was used to buy carbon offset to compensate the
environmental impact of shipping by the company and its literacy partners. In the financial year 2008,
BWB earned revenues of US$ 21 million and had a revenue target of US$ 31 million in fiscal 2009.
CORE VALUES AND MISSION
Better World Books is a global bookstore that harnesses the power of capitalism to bring literacy and
opportunity to people around the world.
WE LOVE BOOKS
Respect the book: read often and help others to do the same.
FLABBERGAST OUR CUSTOMERS
Seek out opportunities to make a difference with value, service & selection.
INVEST WELL. WASTE NOT.
Choose wisely; consider the return on your efforts & the impact in your actions. Reuse, reuse,
reuse….then reduce & recycle.
LEAD THE MOVEMENT
Take a stand; share your enthusiasm and build momentum through human connections.
SPEAK THROUGH ACTION
Put your ideas to work; play to win but never fear failure.
BE PASSIONATE
Wear your heart on your sleeve; stand up for what you believe.
PURSUE GROWTH & LEARNING
Challenge yourself; make a point to try new things.
BE GENUINE
Keep it real; be honest with others and true to your quirktastic self.
EMBRACE CHANGE
Adapt to circumstances; help others find ways to succeed in our evolving world.
RESPECT OUR TEAM
Be humble; welcome diversity and recognize that shared success is the only kind that matters.

2. WHERE THEY ARE AT PRESENT AND WHERE THEY WANT TO GO?
On May 06, 2009, Better World Books (BWB), the US-based 'for-profit' social venture, won
BusinessWeek's3 "America's Most Promising Social Entrepreneurs" award. BusinessWeek considered 'for
profit’ companies which had been in operation for at least one year for the award. It asked its readers to
vote for those businesses that were making money as well as bringing about societal change. About
12,000 BusinessWeek readers cast their votes for 25 finalist companies and BWB got the first place with
36 percent of the votes. According to BusinessWeek, "With 36% of the vote, online bookseller Better
World Books led the pack. The 200-person company makes money selling books it gets for free from a
network of individuals and institutions across the country."4
BWB also figured at the 12th position in Time magazine's list of ’25 Responsibility Pioneers’ who were
changing the world, published in September 2009.
As of late 2009, BWB had plans to expand overseas, develop a book-publishing division, and
offer a book-rental service from its website. They also want to achieve Revenue of $75
Million by 2012.
Business: Online bookseller of new and used books
Locations: Alpharetta, GA; Goshen and Mishawaka, IN; Edinburgh, Scotland
Revenues: $45 million
Employees: 300
Ownership:
• road based stock options for both employees and nonprofit partners
• bonuses for employees
Engagement:
• comprehensive benefits
• detailed quarterly updates provided to all employees
• engagement surveys
Business result:
• low employee turnover
• increased profitability during economic downturn

3. RECOMMENDATIONS TO A STRATEGY
The core strategy to take the revenue to 75 million USD should still stick to core values and existing
model of the company as the social cause and people cause cannot be forgotten to increase the revenue
even during economic downturns As the economy reels, enterprising individuals who apply business
practices to solving societal problems are gaining support from public and private sectors. The existing
growth model of BWB indicates extreme positive signs of growth in spite of economic downturns of
recessions and hence a similar business model should be applied while keeping technological, economic
and competitive advantage as flexible to adapt to market situations.
New Advancements in developing the renting book model of website and e books/ readers shall be
considered with due weightage to additional costs and risk considerations.
Expanding overseas to new developing economies like BRIC countries shall be considered keeping the EU
economic crisis in mind, however advantages from crisis should be taken in terms of more donations and
cost cuts by various school , colleges and library institutions.
Developing own publishing house in a low labor environment with a greenfield investment today shall be
considered for better revenues in near future.
To gain more investment and support from organizations promoting literacy across the world like
UNESCO and other social responsible organizations like CRY and others can contribute to company’s
capital in terms of subsidies and support programmes in turn of advertisement on books and other media
concerning methods to create awareness and other social causes.
Let us illustrate same in a SPECIALT approach
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4. PEOPLE
Better World Books’ 300 mostly full-time employees work at its Indiana warehouse where its shipping and
receiving operation is based. The company offers a generous benefits package to 100% of its full time
workers, and supports its part time employees toward having “a path to full time employment and
benefits,” says CEO David Murphy. He notes that as healthcare premiums have gone up, the company
has worked to assume a significant amount of the financial burden to help lessen the impact of higher
contribution costs for employees. The company has developed an extensive scorecard by which it tracks
its social, environmental and financial metrics for continuous improvement, as well as surveying
employees annually to get their input. One survey question asks what employees value about working at
Better World Books, and a clear response is that the social mission matters to the employees, according
to CFO Paul Sansone.
The recent economic downturn provided the company with a test of its core values. The South Bend /
Mishawaka/ Elkhart, Indiana area was hard hit by the recession, with deep losses in its manufacturing
base. The company met this challenge by stretching to avoid layoffs. When reducing the workforce by 42
was all but inevitable, the CEO and Co-Founders took a 20% pay cut, VPs took 15%, managers 10%, and
floor employees took 5% (without a loss in benefits). Management promised employees that if they hit
their target by the end of the year everyone would get a bonus.
They delivered. The company was profitable by the second half of the year and all salaries were
reinstated – except the executives’. Murphy says the move to retain the executives’ pay cuts for a year
instead of six months prompted questions from employees who thought everyone should benefit from the
company’s return to growth. Murphy thinks that the employees’ concern shows that the management
team did the right thing by “making the cuts, sacrificing, and communicating,” he said. Openness and
transparency with the financials during the downturn was also key in keeping the team intact. Note: after
a full year of the executive pay cuts, the board voted to restore six months’ worth of pay cuts made to
executive team salaries, based on performance.
Message to society should always circle around that fact that From the spring of 2003 through
September 2009, Better World Books has collected more than 25 million books, raising more than $7.3
million for over 80 literacy and education non-profit organizations, sending 1.5 million books to our
partner programs & saving over 13,000 tons of books from landfills.
Hence as consultancy we can recommend that
Shared sacrifices and clear communication about the firm’s financial situation during an economic
downturn will help maintain morale and may even improve business performance and hence can be
exercised in future if required
For any overseas expansions people’s aspect from both society and intercultural point of view cannot be
ignored , also in developing countries the ratios of book supplied to books purchased can be completely
different from the existing countries, the employee the customers the suppliers and above all society
includes people and hence due importance should be given to them while executing any such decision.

5. CAPITAL AND SHARED OWNERSHIP:
The 300-person company makes money by selling books it gets for free from a network of individuals and
institutions across the country. In 2009, it started giving stock options to its five major literacy partners,
an innovation designed by Good Capital, the lead investor in a recent $2 million venture-capital round.
Helgesen expects Better World, which has secured around $4 million in equity investment in total, to
bring in $30 million in revenue this calendar year and be profitable in 2010. He credits the company's
reasonable prices with its success ("Five used books for $15," reads a recent ad on its Web site). Better
World sells about 10,000 books a day.
Better World Books shares equity with all employees, including warehouse workers earning$9-$10 per
hour, through its incentive stock option program. Each employee receives an initial grant of stock options
after one year, followed by subsequent awards based on performance. While Murphy notes some
challenges in educating employees about the benefits and risks of sharing equity, small group “lunch and
learns” on a range of financial literacy topics have contributed to a more financially savvy workforce.
The company has received outside investment from Good Capital and several angel investors. If there is
a liquidity event, the partners expect significant rewards for investors, management, and all employees
who hold options. In addition, however, the book seller will have another, more unusual, beneficiary in
the deal – its
Non profit literacy partners.
Better World Books had always planned EMPLOYEES MATTER 65 to share gains with these partners –
Books for Africa, Room to Read and others – which help the firm achieve its mission of eradicating
illiteracy around the globe. When Good Capital invested, they helped the company think through adding
the nonprofits,
not just as beneficiaries of charitable contributions (the company previously donated a percentage of
revenues), but
as equity holders. The CEO and Co-Founders initially created a 5% equity stake with a regular vesting
schedule for these nonprofits, based on the promise that if Better World Books could finance their work,
the partners would help even more people learn to read. To keep the incentive structure in place, the
nonprofits gain a greater equity stake
through measureable improvements in their literacy targets. To the company and its investors, the model
makes sense financially and socially.
As Good Capital principal Kevin Jones puts it, the social mission is “baked in.” In other words, due to their
unique structure, the nonprofit partners and Better World Book’s employees – often the last consideration
in conventional corporate deal making – will always have a seat at this company’s table.
Business Results | Although Murphy says that he cannot empirically tie the firm’s employee engagement
practices to better financial results, he points to the company’s turn from unprofitable to profitable during
difficult economic conditions as evidence. “Over the past year, our business has done better than ever
during a time when we easily could have had losses and high employee attrition,” he said. “Instead, we
held together and the fact of shared cuts
– later reinstated – kept everyone’s spirits up.”
Hence we can recommend that there can be creative solutions for engaging both employees and other
stakeholders in company success, also support from organizations promoting literacy across the world
like UNESCO and other social responsible organizations like CRY and others can contribute to company’s
capital in terms of subsidies and support programmes in turn of advertisement on books and other media
concerning methods to create awareness and other social causes.

6. TECHNOLOGY
Investment in technology should be focused and should enhance existing competitive gauge in the
industry , also in economic leanness enough measures should be taken on lean in existing softwares
without sacrificing the upgrades as per the need of the hour and trend and user friendliness portals for
both customers and companies,
For overseas expansions and further publishing house initiatives technology can not only play a role in
the core product delivery, besides that technology can also be crucial for marketing advertising and
generating revenues for BWB from advertisements on websites,
The current outsourced partners contracts should be renegotiated with BOT (Build Operate and Transfer)
model to minimize cost and invest same in various other technological advancements to generate
revenue, market of e book and e book readers is on rise and hence tie ups with various manufacturers of
same for preinstalled e books and cost associated projects can be initiated instead of directly entering
into an existing competitive technology market.
The diagram below illustrates the focused investment on technological aspects for both existing and new
Advancements to target various new and existing systems for becoming more efficient and hence
generating more ROI
Apart from softwares and websites technology will play a key role if BWB plans to initiate their own
publishing house and will hence require big investments initially and should hence be planned asap
And executed with effective communication and energy saving ground for carbon footprinting.

7. OPERATIONAL
In late 2009, BWB had 250 to 300 full-time employees. In the seasonal textbook business, August
and January were the busiest times, during which the warehouse staff increased to 50 employees.
These employees sorted each incoming book by condition—acceptable, good, very good, like new—
and attached stickers, including a code to identify its source. They scanned each book’s bar code to
enter information into a database, organizing the books as they came in.
As the number of collected books will grow, further BWB will need more warehousing space, which can
lead to further investments also increase in workspace and requirement of more skilled resources as
per the advancement in technology will lead to further expansion of work force.
With the core activity incremental, new investment in publishing house and website development for
renting books will create operational complexities for department of coordination between renting
books department and conventional department, hence as the complexity will increase the reduction in
waste mechanism will be required to ensure minimum efficiency and productivity losses.
Not only in terms of internal operations , also as any organization grows similarly book collection
programmes and other activities operations will lead to further complexity , hence same can be
outsourced up to an extent for cases of remote book collections.
With overseas expansion the need of bringing books to a central system or warehouse and then
delivering to customer should be minimized further with more distribution centers and widely spread
small warehouses also keeping the point of customer delivery as close as possible to the warehouse
delivering same.
The above mentioned diagram illustrates the change in operating environment to support the review
systems of existing processes for both in house and outsourced operations from both cost and
development point of views.

8. BUSINESS MODEL
BWB's business model reflected its commitment to the TRIPLE BOTTOM LINE APPROACH. The company
made efforts to achieve social, environmental, and economic sustainability. It directly donated books and
gave financial support to literacy initiatives worldwide. Moreover, a percentage of each sale was given
separately to the individuals, libraries, or colleges as well as literacy partners chosen by them. BWB did
not advertise in the media about collecting and selling books; awareness about its business model was
mainly spread through word of mouth. According to Helgesen, "Every time a customer is flabbergasted,
they are going to tell people, and that endorsement won't cost us a dime. Since its inception, BWB
showed its commitment to the triple bottom line approach. The company made efforts to achieve social,
environmental, and economic sustainability. It measured its performance in three areas - PEOPLE,
PLANET, and PROFIT as shown in the diagram.
Today the company sells used books on major sites like Amazon.com and E-bay’s half.com as well as its
own website. Just six years old, the company earned $31 million inrevenue in 2009 and has prevented
over 33 million books from entering landfills todate. As part of its expansive social mission, Better World
Books is a certified B-Corp,a movement to expand the legal structure of corporations to include
employee,community and environmental interests when making business decisions.
Hence we can recommend that current business model is contributing to vision of the company and is in
tandem with the core set of values , there can be questions raised on social cause of the business to be
reduced to support the goal of revenue and in extreme economic crisis, however the longer run model
suggest that the CSR visibility and such initiatives are helping BWB for their vision
"Right now only one out of seven people is a potential customer—if we can bring people up to levels of
equivalent literacy—we're helping our long-term business model," says Helgesen, who launched the
business with fellow Notre Dame alum Christopher "Kreece" Fuchs

9. SUMMARY
 To Gain a exponential growth and keeping current market trends and situation in mind as
explained in strategy section above Expanding overseas to new developing economies like BRIC
countries shall be considered keeping the EU economic crisis in mind, however advantages from
crisis should can also be taken meanwhile in terms of more donations and cost cuts by various
school , colleges and library institutions.
 Developing own publishing house in a low labor environment with a greenfield investment today
shall be considered for better revenues in long run future and also going to a safe model option
but not completely should be exercised to support the seasonal business offset any risks due to
seasonal business.
 Existing supplier base should be enhanced with advantages from current economic crisis from
cost cuts in various libraries schools etc.
 To gain more investment and support from organizations promoting literacy across the world like
UNESCO and other social responsible organizations like CRY and others can contribute to
company’s capital in terms of subsidies and support programmes in turn of advertisement on
books and other media concerning methods to create awareness and other social causes.
 New Advancements in developing the renting book model of website and e books/ readers shall
be considered with due weightage to additional costs and risk considerations.

 The core value and business model should remain intact however should be made flexible to
adapt to new market trends and the social approach indirectly should be made more public so as
to gain sympathetic and advertising advantages form same.
 E book reader manufacturer tie ups for pre installed e books as mentioned in sections above will
lead to more revenue to support further investments at the same time will minimize the risk of
vulnerability in directly entering an existing competitive market of e books.
 Careful investment in website advertisement portals and publishing house also going lean
in outsourced projects will help reducing costs and increase ROI.
 With close monitoring of current ongoing path and keeping current and past revenue trends in
mind the revenue will achieve the targeted figure of $75 Million USD
- Vineet Kumar Tyagi

10. REFERENCES
1 Company Web site: http://www.betterworldbooks.com/info.aspx.
2 http://www.betterworldbooks.com/info.aspx.
3 Jim Meenan, “$4.5 Million Boosts Mishawaka’s Better World Books,” South Bend Tribune, April 8, 2008.
4 http://www.betterworldbooks.com/info.aspx.
5 Nick Leiber, “The Most Promising Social Entrepreneurs,” BusinessWeek, May 1, 2009.
6 Ekjyot Saini, “Michigan: To one charity, old books mean a better world,” Michigan Daily,
September 20,
2006.
7 Stephanie Elam, “Building Better World a Book at a Time,” http://www.cnn.com. (accessed July 2,
2009).
9 Gene Stowe, “Literacy the Bottom Line; ND Grads Begin ‘Social Venture’ to Put Old Books to Good
Use,”
South Bend Tribune, January 24, 2005.
13 Gene Stowe, “BWB Revamping Its Process,” Tribune Business Weekly, April 10, 2007.
14 Stowe, “Literacy the Bottom Line.”
Stowe, “Literacy the Bottom Line.”
16 Christina Hildreth, “Old Textbooks See New Use; BWB Donates to Literacy Charities,” South Bend
Tribune,
June 6, 2006.
17 Hildre
http://sjfinstitute.org/sites/default/files/EM%20Profiles%20Better%20World%20Books.pdf
http://hbr.org/product/better-world-books/an/511057-PDF-ENG
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Better_World_Books