Bookmooch

[pegkerr]

Here's a cool idea: Bookmooch. From their website:

BookMooch is a community for exchanging used books.
BookMooch lets you give away books you no longer need in exchange for books you really want.

Give & receive: Every time you give someone a book, you earn a point and can get any book you want from anyone else at BookMooch. Once you've read a book, you can keep it forever or put it back into BookMooch for someone else, as you wish.

No cost: there is no cost to join or use this web site: your only cost is mailing your books to others.

Points for entering books: you receive a tenth-of-a-point for every book you type into our system, and one point each time you give a book away. In order to keep receiving books, you need to give away at least one book for every five you receive.

Help charities: you can also give your points to charities we work with, such as children's hospitals (so a sick kid can get a free book delivered to their bed), Library fund, African literacy, or to us to thank us for running this web site .

World wide: You can request books from other countries, in other languages. You receive 3 points when you send a book out of your country, to help compensate you for the greater mailing cost, but it only costs the moocher 2 points to get the book. John Buckman, who runs BookMooch, has lived in California, England, France and Germany, and was frustrated by the vast number of books that were printed in just one country and not available in the other countries (for example, many books are published in Britain and never made available in America).

Comments

[teacherla.livejournal.com]

Are there any reviews of the service?

[hermione-like.livejournal.com]

I've used it before and never had a problem with any of the people on the site, either sending my books to them or receiving them (if this counts as a review). :)

[wild-irises.livejournal.com]

Ditto. I had one package that was never acknowledged, and one odd refusal to send me a book, but I'm basically a huge fan.

[http://users.livejournal.com/anam_cara_/]

Sounds cool. I've been using http://www.bookcrossing.com/ myself, and I also know of http://www.bookins.com/ which sounds similar. I've also recently got signed up on http://www.goodreads.com/ which I've really enjoyed.

[coraa.livejournal.com]

Ooh. That looks promising!

[malinaldarose.livejournal.com]

There's also PaperbackSwap.com, of which I am fond, but it's only available in the US.

[chamisa.livejournal.com]

How coincidental; I was just scoping out BookMooch myself, on the recommendation of some nice people at LibraryThing (http://www.librarything.com/) (a site I highly recommend). I'm trying to figure out what to do about my "problem" of too many books and not enough shelf space. I tend to hang on to my books even when I don't like them, or read them anymore, or probably won't read them...and normally, when I do get rid of books, it's through used bookstores. I have tried Bookcrossing as well, but I'm admittedly greedy; I usually want to get more books in exchange. Anyway, I'm thinking of trying BookMooch out. Here are some informational links that might be of interest:

Bookmooch Blog (http://blog.bookmooch.com/)
BookMooch Wiki (http://wiki.bookmooch.com/index.php?title=Main_Page)
LibraryThing's BookMooch group (http://www.librarything.com/groups/bookmooching)

[aelfsciene.livejournal.com]

I've been a member of Bookmooch for, hm, getting close to a year now, and have been really happy with it. Right now I'm truant on a couple of books because of illness and flake level, I have to admit, and I've had one book never turn up and a second in unreadable condition, but it's been overall marvelous. I'm bluehairedangie if anyone turns up there, although my inventory has been thoroughly winnowed down by now.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

I've been using it for ages, and it's been nothing but fantastic.

[wild-irises.livejournal.com]

But I decided to buy your book rather than trying to mooch it, after I read your PTSD series.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Cool! Thanks!

[nlbarber]

I'm a member of both Bookmooch and PaperBackSwap, though I prefer PaperBackSwap for its additional structure. BookMooch is a free-for-all for grabbing newly posted (desirable) books, where PaperBackSwap does it by seniority and, soon, by some sort of rated points on how much you want a given book. PBS also nicely prints out the wrapper or mailing label for the book (and will try to get you to buy the postage from them to help their expenses, but I ignore that). It's a style thing--I like the PBS system's assistance, and don't mind the extra rules. But BookMooch with its international presence gets some different stuff.

I'm not getting rid of the excess books at a very fast rate, but they are leaving the house.

[kiwiria.livejournal.com]

I've been on Bookmooch for about a year and LOVE it. It's a great way to exchange my older, not-likely-to-be-reread books for some new ones that I actually enjoy :) I'm kiwiria on there as well.

[tamaranth.livejournal.com]

I've been using it for about a year and have sent out 300+ books. However, I have received >200 books (some of them much-sought copies of old favourites, some just on spec) so it's not doing wonders for the bookshelf-space issue!

Definitely recommended: the community is generally very polite and friendly, and it's nice to think of my discards going to people who want them.

[megancrewe.livejournal.com]

I've been using BookMooch for six months now and had nothing but good experiences (and gotten a lot of wonderful books out of it). I was so glad to find a site that finally lets internationals join in the trading!

[oracne.livejournal.com]

I love BookMooch. I often trade recent romance novels I don't want to keep for people's old college textbooks on topics that interest me.