The Way of the Editor:

BookMooch

Give books away and get the ones you want? Right on!

Ever try to sell a book on Amazon only to find out it’s worth less than the paper it’s printed on? If you’re anything like me, you probably have a lot of books you don’t want, but just can’t bear to throw away. There’s just some intrinsic value that you won’t let go of, and donating tothe library or Goodwill doesn’t seem quite satisfying enough. So you sit there, dusty piles of paper growing beneath you, thinking, “Heck, if I lived in a third world country, some of my books would make better toilet paper than resells.”

Enter BookMooch, my new favorite obsession:

BookMooch is the an online swap service that puts readers and book owners in touch with each other. You sign up for free and put up the books you don’t want by title, author, or ISBN number. For every book requested, you get one point for domestic shipping, and three points if a book is sent internationally. You do have to pay for cost of postage (hence the point system), but you pay no money to get books sent out to you. You can then use the points you’ve acquired towards getting your own book requests from others. (See their overview.)

This friendly, community-oriented vibe had me charmed since my introduction less than a month ago. The point system seems to be really geared towards encouraging a strong community of positive readers and traders, andI like this emphasis. You get 0.1 point for every book you list and another 0.1 point everytime you leave feedback. Points are given away the moment a book is requested: this way, the sender can immediately put their points to work. Wanna share the points you’ve accrued with others? Just send out a "Smooch” to your BookMooch friend. Better yet, checkout their Charities section to donate your BookMooch points to a needy cause. I was also pleasantly surprised when I requested Peter David’s Sir Apropos of Nothing a couple weeks back and was sent not just the book I requested, but the sequel for free as well. (Terrible novel, by the way, which I do not recommend unless you have a high tolerance for narrative pontification. Sad, because I was hoping for better from Peter David.)

But why use BookMooch when competitor sites like Paperbackswap.com offer similar services? Well, for starters, BookMooch is HUGE, with 16,601 members in just the States alone, not to not to mention the thousands more active members in countries like Canada, Britain, France, Germany, etc., all around the world. Translated versions of the website are available in six different languages. So why not pickup a German copy of the book you love?

Nice, large type and simple menus also make the site pretty easy to navigate, even if the browse and search system isn’t the best there is. Alack, it’s not the sophisticated search engine of Amazon.com, but not a big deal if you already know the titles or authors you like to read and want. The listings are thorough and better than rival service Paperbackswap.com when I did a cross comparison of available obscure books. And because BookMooch is a free service, it funds itself by linking users to the corresponding Amazon.com listing if a book is not available on the site. Purchases made on Amazon.com earn BookMooch a small commission, and it all goes to a good cause.

Oh, and did I mention that BookMooch has comics listed for trade? Not as good as selling them on Atomic Avenue, of course, but it’s anything goes as far as print publications are concerned.

So if it sounds like a fun opportunity to you, I’d like to invite y’all into the community. Heck, look me up as a friend under the user name InverseReality:

Give away your books at BookMooch.com

 

Additional Links of Interest:

Swapadvd.com—run by the same people who run Paperbackswap.com, this is a service for folks interested in swapping DVDs. Some red tape to cross before getting started, but overall, it’s a pretty rewarding moment to trade your old Caveman DVD for a shiny new Kill Bill Vol. 1.

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