Brothers In Blog

What is “social networking?” Wikipedia describes social networking in its simplest form as “a map of all of the relevant ties between the nodes being studied.” What? Sounds like a lawyer or excessively “politically correct” person authored that entry. However, from my perspective “social networking” is all about sharing. Yes, someone could argue that “social networking” is so much more, but at the core of every “social network” is sharing. And few other instances on the web today exemplify sharing as much as Bookmooch.

A community for exchanging used books. That is how Bookmooch defines itself, or as its tag line says: Give books away. Get books you want. Although I’m not totally sold on their “tag line” I do concur with their self definition. Despite my syntactical hangups, Bookmooch remains the epitome of “sharing” on the web.

A point based book sharing program, Bookmooch works in the following manner:

• Start a free account at Bookmooch.
• Search around your home for books you no longer want and list them on Bookmooch.
• Each book listed yields 1/10 of a point. Add 10 books into the system and you get 1 point.
• For every book someone “mooches” from your list, you receive 1 point. With that point, you can “mooch” a book from someone else in the system.
• You must maintain a ratio of 1 mooched book for every 5 books you mooch.
• By signing up for the program you agree to pay for the media mail shipping costs whenever someone mooches one of your books. Therefore, when you mooch a book from someone else, you pay nothing.
• Aside from agreeing to pay for the shipping on books mooched from you, there are NO hidden fees or charges. That’s right, no traction fees, listing fees, etc.

Media mail is a U.S. Postal Service shipping option reserved for books, cds, vcr tapes, dvds and other similar media. It’s the slowest shipping option available but it is also one of the cheapest. Average costs I’ve encountered have been between $1.50 to $2.50.

I joined Bookmooch in Q4 of 2006. Since that time I have given away 10 books, mooched 1 book, have 11.6 points available and maintain a mooching ratio of 0.1:1. You can view my Bookmooch profile at their web site and even “subscribe” to an RSS feed of my book inventory.

Personally I haven’t mooched that many books, but I love Bookmooch nonetheless. You might think that I get some type of referral point for the links in this article, but I don’t. I just wanted to rave about this great web service to anyone that enjoys sharing books.

Yes, there are other options for recycling used books. I could try and sell these books on a web based auction site but unless the book is very popular or recently published, the profit isn’t worth the effort. Also, I could donate these books to my local public library; however, every time I did, the librarian acted as if she was doing my a favor. Hey, I don’t need that kind of aggravation, I can take my books elsewhere and that elsewhere is Bookmooch — I highly recommend you check it out.

Barry’s 2-Cents:

WOW! What a great concept. I definitely have some outdated computer reference books that some up and coming PC whiz kid might find entertaining (my DOS 5.0 manual is NOT for sale). I can see this concept stretching into other forums such as VHS and DVD movies.

A few months ago I decided to ditch most of my VHS movies and donated a full copier box full to my local library. I didn’t get the level of enthusiasm I had hoped for when I handed them to the librarian, but I think under that monotone facade there was some giddiness. I know I feel good seeing my movies on display in the library for others to enjoy at no charge. Bookmooch provides a much needed outlet for those of us who know that our old books deserve a better home than the local landfill.

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