Imagine waking up one morning, to an entire library propped up in your living room. The titles will all be a surprise, although you’ll have an inkling of what to expect. One hundred books to be precise, and you will have three months to read them.
This delicious thought for any book-lover, is the idea behind Preloved Books Library at Ashok Nagar. The brain behind it is 23-year-old Vinod Sridhar, an aerospace engineer.
Vinod came up with the idea last month, and so far, has set up libraries for five customers, including corporates. “My father has been in to books distribution for over thirty years,” says Vinod. “Once we set up the library in November last year, I wanted to put our extensive inventory to good use.” Vinod feels that despite the love for print, a lot of people are not able to read the kind of books they want to, due to space and money issues. “I wanted to solve this problem, and decided to set up a shelf of books for people at home, and change the books every three months,” he explains.
This is how Vinod’s home library concept works: Once a customer subscribes with him for ₹6,000 a year, he installs a shelf with 100 books at their office or home. The selection of titles is done with a lot of thought. He first sends his customer a questionnaire to fill up to get an idea of what kind of books they like. However, readers can pick only 10 books of their choice. He curates the rest, so that they have the benefit of an element of surprise. The shelf remains at the customer’s place of choosing and Vinod replaces the titles after three months.
“They do have the option of retaining the books after the first three months if they wish to,” explains Vinod. With corporates showing interest in his home library concept, Vinod hopes that more people are encouraged to read by the presence of a library right before their eyes. “We have a good range of authors and genres to choose from, including fiction and non-fiction,” he adds. Vinod is presently approaching pre-schools to set up specially-curated libraries for children.
Preloved Books Library is located at Moovendar Colony, Ashok Nagar. For details, call 9025182549.
