Our Goal
Born Free Books is dedicated to creating a fun, knowledgeable, sharing community of book lovers, with the primary objective of ensuring that we keep reading at the heart of our communities even through tough economic times when people can find it difficult to afford their next read.
Our History
This is an initiative by The Hatchery Limited and its partners. The Hatchery was established in 2006 with the central goal of improving the quality of websites and content on the Internet by investing in interesting ideas that complement that strategy. For the past 3 years we have undertaken work for clients under the auspices of a web and mobile design and development studio and have built up a neat portfolio of projects as showcased now on our website. These projects have helped us keep our business afloat during these tough economic times and afforded us the opportunity to work on our own projects that are well aligned with our initial vision for the business. Born Free Books is the first public manifestation of this investment of our time and resources, and we love it.
The idea came to us from a friend that had recently been travelling in the United States and who happened to stumble on a book in a lavatory on a ferry while on a long journey. Being book-less it was a precious find and kept him entertained until the end of his trip. Thinking more about it, and being entrepreneurial himself, he conjured up the idea of Born Free Books. On returning to England from his trip he did some research and stumbled upon a similar service that had been around for a few years. That service seemed to be primarily US-centric (despite representing books in multiple countries), and as none of us had ever heard of it and he knew of our web design and development credentials, he approached us to help him build this new service with an initial focus on the UK and a foundation that would be built on the latest in social media technologies and mapping tools.
So after blood, sweat and tears and over 9 months of brainstorming, design and development, we finally launched Born Free Books in private beta in November 2009 and opened it to the general public in April 2010.
We believe we have designed and developed a great service that is easy for people to grasp, and captures a book's journey as well as a user's liberated library in a wonderful and almost tangible way. We embraced this project for numerous reasons:
- We are book fanatics and book hoarders - just the kind of people that we feel will enjoy the service
- We believe reading lies at the heart of our communities and want to ensure that continues
- Our ultimate goal for this business is to support education and reading in developing countries (such as South Africa where we were all born and raised) with profits we may make
Perpetuating a reading culture is vital and we would love to hear from you about any new ideas for our service that you may find useful and beneficial.
Thank you for taking the time to visit us and read a bit more about our heritage. Good luck setting your library free!
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