Better World Books

That's a question many college students have pondered. But for Xavier Helgesen and his partners, Kreece Fuchs and Jeff Kurtzman, that question laid the foundation for their company, Better World Books. "We just thought, like, wow, there are all these books out there that the bookstores are just saying, 'No, I don't want it,' but there's totally value in those books," Helgesen said. "You just gotta get them efficiently up on the Internet and then someone will buy them."

Since the university bookstore wouldn't buy back their used textbooks, the founders tried selling the books on the eBay company half.com. The books sold like "gangbusters," Helgesen said, for about $50 each. From there the partners began holding book drives. In one drive in 2002, they collected 2,000 books and then sold them for $20,000 the next autumn. That success led to other drives, but textbooks couldn't sustain the business alone. So Better World Books began reaching out to libraries.

"We went to the American Library Association conference with kind of a one page printed pamphlet that said, 'We'll sell your books,' and we heard all these horror stories," Helgesen said. "We heard of libraries having to dump books down a well at midnight because they weren't allowed to even recycle them, but they didn't have any room on their shelves and they needed a home for these old books. Every day, Better World brings in 40,000 to 50,000 books, and the company says they send just as many out. Now with more than 2 million books in their Mishawaka, Indiana, warehouse at any given time, the owners of Better World Books said they think they have a book for everyone -- and a small business plan others can follow.