DVD/book club/subscription?

A question about : DVD/book club/subscription?

Hi I have an idea of setting up a book/dvd club with educational dvds/books within a sport category (I have the necessary customer base already) the intention is to charge a small fee per month and people can borrow one book or dvd at a time. So people can enhance their knowledge on a particular subject without purchasing lots of dvds and books. These books arent really available in normal lending libraries I know you need a license to hire out films but what about educational dvds or books? if the dvd lending is a problem, then a book club would be fine. Does anyone have any info on this please? if there are problems with doing this, what about if I didnt own the books and dvds and instead set up a system for people to swap their own with each other? any help appreciated! thanks

Best answers:

• There is no real license required to rent out DVDs (https://www.bva.org.uk/frequently-ask...deo_DVD_store_) but you need to ensure you have the copyright owners permission to rent them. The permission you receive from a disc that you walk into HMV and buy is just for private viewing.
  Commercially there are discs sold via wholesale etc that comes with the permission to rent it out as standard but legally you cannot then sell it on afterwards - though many will come with dual permission but the permission to sell may be delayed (ie for blockbuster new releases they can be rented immediately but not sold for 9 months or such)
  You'd need to see if the discs you want to rent out come with the necessary permissions, are available to buy with them as standard or if you are going to have to establish the copyright owner and get their permission (which would normally come at a cost)
  Facilitating others selling/ exchanging their possessions shouldnt cause you too much of an issue but you'll need to ensure that you have proper processes in place to deal with selling/ giving away illegal copies etc
• I don't know a heap about this sector, but I know 'rentable' DVD licenced cost markedly more than retail - back in the 80's (!) when a retail VHS was about a tenner, rental ones were around Ј80 apiece. Would that kind of pricing gap affect the viability of your business? Libraries have to pay a fee proportional to the number of loans each book has had (pretty crude system, but that's the idea behind it at least), again I imagine you may tread into that territory. On the other hand, what's the likelihood of getting caught, and cost risk to the business if you are? Worth weighing up.
  There may be technical alternatives though - video on demand streaming for a small cost and you just take an affiliate fee for the view. It would mean finding the same films online on legit/publishers sites, and joining them as affiliates if they have such a scheme, or setting up such a scheme if not. You could do so (as some kind of joint venture with the IP owners) via one of the white label streaming services. That way, you'd get a few pence for each view nationally, and not have to spank Ј80+ on a piece of physically scratchable plastic you're lending out to world+dog! Keeping track of loans, condition, fees, replacements, etc would get dull after the first few months, maybe?!
• Will this be by post or in person? If by post then how will you stop people nicking the DVDs or books, if they've only paid the monthly fee once and they steal (refuse to send back) the first thing they've borrowed then you'll be out of pocket instantly. Likewise if it's in person then you'll need set up some kind of fine system to help prevent people from refusing to give back something they've borrowed.
  Also if by post then you'll need to factor in the cost of the occasional item going missing thanks to Royal Mail, as well as how much of your monthly fee will be going in to postage costs.
• Do not try to reinvent the wheel. If this is a niche business, then why not find a similar niche business but in a different subject, take out a subscription for it, and see how they are doing and learn from them. Would you think of starting a fish and chip shop, having never bought fish and chips in a fish and chips shop?
• Thanks everyone for your help
• I set up a couple of portal sites for lending of ebooks based on specific subjects, the model was pretty simple, customer pays a subscription fee and can access the full library of titles, they could only 'borrow' five ebooks at a time and they would have to check one in to get another once the limit had been reached.
  It was a nice simple model that the customer could manage themselves with a little training and has been very profitable.