Bookscription

Proposal Project
Submitted To: Potential Investors
Audience: College Students
Joe Hinkle, Shakti Patel, Revanth Challuru, Josh Theys, Jake Whittaker
December 3, 2015

Fast, easy, and affordable!

Table of Contents
Abstract .................................................................................................. 3
Introduction ........................................................................................... 4
Plan ...................................................................................................... 5-6
Why Invest In Our Proposal ................................................................... 7
Approach ............................................................................................. 8-9
Evaluation............................................................................................. 10
Qualifications ....................................................................................... 11
Supplemental Materials ....................................................................... 12
Gnatt/Pert Chart ..................................................................................................................................... 13
Log/ Journal........................................................................................................................................ 14-15
Survey Monkey................................................................................................................................... 16-17
Business Card .......................................................................................................................................... 18
Company Website ................................................................................................................................... 18
Company Flyer ........................................................................................................................................ 19

Appendix .............................................................................................. 20
Sources ................................................................................................. 21

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Abstract
Our project, Bookscription, is the answer to affordable college textbooks for students.
Bookscription is a monthly subscription-based textbook rental service that combines the
successful Netflix and Redbox business model and saves a significant amount of money over
ones college career. It allows students to rent out any textbook he or she needs at any time for a
flat fee and an ensured fast delivery. Theres no more need for outrageous rental and purchase
prices for books that are rarely used on a day-to-day basis.

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Introduction
As many students will tell you, the entire process of buying, renting, returning and selling books
is a major headache. Since textbooks are a requirement of college, this leaves students in a
frustrating situation. Currently to buy new and used textbooks the prices range from $100-300,
and renting is only slightly cheaper. When you sell your books you lose the majority of its value
so it's really an all-around lose-lose situation for students. When tuition is already a major cost,
buying books should not be a financial burden on students.

The above textbook is one that is required for all students in Psyc 1101, it's one that I had to buy
last year. For just this one textbook it cost over $200 new. Even if you rent it as a digital copy its
$60, or if you want a rented physical copy it will cost you $110. So as you can see this is a huge
problem, some students, especially those in general education classes may have 3-4 books they
have to purchase. So on top of tuition, they could have an added cost of nearly $1000 for
textbooks.

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Plan
Our Proposal
We would like to provide students attending post-secondary institutions with an option to rent
textbooks that is affordable and convenient. Today we have many successful startups including
Netflix and Redbox that allow customers to rent movies for any period of time and the rates
increase as you consecutively rent more than one physical copy of a DVD/Blu-ray at a time. This
system has been proved to be economical and reasonable for the price. Why not do the same but
with textbooks? Most college students are financially responsible for themselves and are looking
for ways to make and save money. According to our survey, students on average spend between
$200-300 a semester to purchase/rent textbooks. However, only a small percent use at LEAST
one of their textbooks on a daily basis. Nearly three quarters of the participants would at least
consider the option to pay for a monthly subscription for textbook rentals. The rest of the
participants chose that they would not subscribe to the service. However, whether it is because of
the price or the process of renting a textbook, there is always room for improvement and
attracting more users of this service.

Our Objective
Our company wants to provide students with a textbook rental service that is easy, convenient,
and affordable.

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How does our plan measure up to industry standards?

Its quite simple actually. Compare our proposal to the current services we have today that our
company has derived its plan from. Take a glimpse at their numbers and customer satisfaction
ratings. Commonly used textbook rental providers such as Amazon and Chegg are increasingly
appealing to the market because of their easy process and quick shipping options. Our (proposed)
plan is based on a blend of the current textbook and Netflixs entertainment rental models to
provide an ultimate service that includes the perks that have been implemented already plus the
economic benefit.

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Why Invest In Our Proposal

Everything about the potential market and benefits as an investor
Take the basis of our business model, a monthly subscription for textbooks, and consider the
potential market for this service. Our plan is set up so that we appeal to individuals that are
financially independent. We are attracting students that rent from websites like Amazon and
Chegg as well as customers going to the local bookstores.
Providing them with a small payment over the course of time is more affordable than forcing a
few hundred before they receive the product. Consider the effects today of having Netflix and
Redbox available to us. Countless numbers of the local movie rental businesses have gone out of
business. One of the largest franchises, Blockbuster, went bankrupt after their rival, Netflix,
introduced their new affordable movie rental service. The amount of customers for cable
television and satellite dish has significantly decreased as the companies Redbox and Netflix
expanded.
Below is a graph of the number of subscribers of Netflix over the course of the last five years.
As you see here, numbers have increased each quarter and have started to pick up even quicker
after Q2 of 2014. This resembles a good forecast of what our model may look like in the future.
Our service is designed to attract the majority of the market of college students. College students
are very familiar with social media and many of us are aware of how things spread like wildfire
on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, etc. and even by word of mouth. Once we introduce our product
to well-populated universities, we will be on track to a successful start-up. Meanwhile students
are taking advantage of our product, we are also increasing revenues and profit which means you
investors are also benefitting.

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Approach
Schedule
Spring Semester 2016

Summer Semester 2016

Fall Semester 2016

We will start with a test of the rental system with a small group of
students. This will allow us to make sure that the website and the
distribution of the textbooks is working as it should. It will also
allow us to meet with those who are using it, to improve it and fix
any bugs with the website or the system.
During the summer we can expand the rental system to more
students as the spring tests will allow us to fix any problems with the
basic system, in summer with more students involved we will be
able to solve any unforeseen problems with a larger group of
participants.
By fall we hope to have all the possible kinks worked out of the
system and will be able to launch it to the entire student body of
UNCC. Beyond that we would like to expand it to other schools in
the state and across the country.

Cost/Budget
The rental system would run on a subscription service that would charge students per month. It
would charge students based on either a flat rate based on multiple factors including but not
limited too; number of books checked out at a time and textbooks needed. Most of our costs will
be devoted to purchasing new books to increase our inventory and marketing to students.
Your flat rate includes your first two books which you can switch with any other two books. If
you want to add a third or fourth book you can change your plan for a small increase per month
which you can cancel for the next month.
If you want to cancel your subscription then you will have to pay a small fee and return to books
that you rented in one week after you canceled or you will be charge to cost of the book.
You can also rent individual books for a month without a subscription for a flat cost. You can
renews to book rental at the end of the month as well.

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Management
Joe Hinkle President
Shakti Patel Vice President
Revanth Challuru Management
Jacob Whittaker Decisions
Joshua Theys Legal

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Evaluation
Business performance will be gauged in two primary ways
1. Subscription usage analytics
Using an analytics service called Parse (parse.com), we can track how many users are
using our product and make predictions on how many we are to expect for the next
semester. After six months of our Bookscription product being out, we can then monitor
our progress and measure our success. We could set a goal of say 10% student acquisition
at universities. Then when our analytics are done after the first sales of the semester, we
can gauge how far off or how many extra customers we have for our proposal. Using this
data, we can know if the project was success and then make adjustments to our business
model given our predictions. By multiplying the number of subscribers by their
respective price tiers and summing them up, we can also get a general performance gauge
based on the dollar amount we have earned.
2. Customer satisfaction measurement
Using Parse (parse.com) again, we are able to get user reviews on their experience. These
customer experience reports will be stored in a Parse database online so we will not lose
the valuable feedback. In addition to being able to type about their experience, a customer
will be able to rate the service from one to five stars. This will enable us to get a good
idea of the overall satisfaction. We can also filter the reviews we ready by the rating the
customer gave. For instance, if we want to read customers who were generally satisfied,
but were maybe just coming short of full satisfaction, we could filter the database and
only read reviews which were four stars.

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Qualifications
Shakti Patel serves as executive vice president of Bookscription LLC. He
leads the information technology, supply chain and administrative services.
Shaktis background is in a Bachelor of Science degrees in Computer
Science and Supply Chain Management at UNC Charlotte. In addition to his
responsibilities, Shakti overseas the direction of the IT backend of
Bookscription services.
Revanth Challuru serves as chief manager of Bookscription LLC. His career
began after his Master's degree in business administration from Stanford
University. Since then, Revanth was a part of five different startups in the
Charlotte area. His responsibilities are focused on the logistics and
communications between Human Resources, Inventory, Finance and
Customer Service departments. Front facing customer interface designs
developed under Revanths approval.
Jacob Whittaker serves as chief decisions consultant of Bookscription LLC.
Finance and Inventory departments take direction from Jacobs quarterly
plans. With his Bachelor of Science degrees in Business from UNC
Charlotte, he is well equipped to managing the direction of two of the major
departments at Bookscription. His major contributions to but departments
have been centered on the acquisition of technical equipment for server
back-ends of the Bookscription system.
Joseph Hinkle serves as president and chief executive officer of
Bookscription LLC. Under his leadership, Bookscription has concentrated
its focus on providing the best possible customer experience through
product reliability and by keeping our subscription service affordable.
Joseph holds two Bachelor of Science degrees in computer science and
economics from University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
Joshua Theys serves as chief legal advisor of Bookscription LLC. The
companys legal and corporate governance functions are largely advised by
Joshua. His background as a corporate attorney for years prior and Bachelor
of Arts degree in American Studies from University of North Carolina at
Chapel Hill make him a powerful addition to the company.

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Supplemental Material

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Gnatt/Pert Chart

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Log/ Journal
Shakti:

Created survey on SurveyMonkey (11/11/15)

Plan and Benefits completed (11/21/2015)
Meeting (12/1/15)
Typed and edited Prezi (12/1/15 - 12/2/15)
Meeting (12/4/15)

Revanth:

Typed and edited Prezi (12/1/15 - 12/2/15)

Created business cards (12/1/2015)
Meeting (12/1/15)
Front matter (12/3/2015)
End matter (12/3/2015)
Meeting (12/4/15)
Compiled and edited (style) all proposal documents (12/5/2015)

Joe:
Created needed documents (11/30/2015)
This served to make sure that I knew what my responsibilities were and what I
needed to get done. By having all the documents I was responsible created, I
could pace myself correctly.
Edited Prezi and added multimedia elements (12/2/15)
Shakti shared the Prezi with me
Added qualification document images and brief descriptions (12/2/15)
Found an image of all of the members and used a grid in Word to format it
properly
Started evaluation document (12/2/15)
Wrote about how our products success will be measured both quantitatively
(monthly users) and monetarily (profit).
Finished qualification descriptions (12/3/15)
I made up a bunch of qualifications for our fake company we are starting.
Filled in on meeting (12/3/15)
While I was had a lab I taught at the same time as the meeting, I was filled in by
Jake, and I made sure in advanced all the group members were okay with that.
There was no solution for a time everyone could make, so I had to make do with
what I had. Jake told me that my main responsibilities were to clean up some
documents and to add a few slides to the Prezi.
Finished evaluation document (12/3/15)

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 Added the second part to the document which included how customer satisfaction
would be measured.
Presentation(12/4/15)
I think it went very well. The best part was the fact that our entire group had
rehearsed it that morning, so there were very few hiccups.
Jacob
Created Introduction (12/1/15)
Meeting (12/1/15)
Created Flyer (12/1/15)
Joshua
Meeting (12/1/15)
Created approach (12/3/15)
Created website (12/3/15)

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Survey

Additional responses: 500.00, $250, 150, $600;

Usually around $300, $200, $200-350

The remainder of the responses are

similar to those already listed

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Business Card

Company Website
http://jtheys7.wix.com/bookscription

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A Great New Way to

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9201 University City Blvd
Charlotte, NC 28223
www.BookScription.com
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Appendix
1) Business will start first at local North Carolina colleges such as but not limited to NC
State, UNC colleges, ECU, WCU, Duke, etc.
a. Within a month or two, we will expand business to other states and eventually
nationally as according to the Schedule of the Approach section.
2) First two books are charged with flat fee. If you wish to checkout more than two books at
a time, the current plan must be changed to the one that suits needs the best.
3) While the books you check out at the same time have the same deadline, you may return
any one of the books before the deadline or swap them for other books free of charge.
4) Pricing and other rate information not definite at the moment. More data collection and
analysis will be performed to establish an optimal pricing.
5) Times on Gnatt/Pert chart is the most accurate representation but may slightly vary with
actual records.

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Sources
"Netflix - Number of Streaming Subscribers Worldwide 2015 | Statistic." Statista. 1 Oct. 2015.
Web. 21 Nov. 2015.

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