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19 May 2008

Discovery: BookMooch.com

I don't keep all the books that I read, and sometimes I take part in car boot sales or garage sales to get rid of some of them. But I'm never very successful. I end up giving a lot away to friends or to members of my face-2-face discussion group (and they give me books back too). The end result though is piles of books around the house.

So I am indebted to someone who left a comment on my blog a couple of posts ago (Bernadette) and pointed me towards Book Mooch.

Here are the details from the About page.

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 three you receive.

  • 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.

    • Quite often these schemes don't work for us in the bottom half of the world, but it looks as if it might work for me. Already I have been contacted regarding books I listed last night. Admittedly both requests involve me sending a book to the US, but the person who originally pointed me towards the scheme says there are around 600 members in Australia, so I should be able to find a crime-fiction person or two, shouldn't I?
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    4 comments:

    1. Bernadette19 May 2008 at 20:23

      I hope you get some books from Australia Kerrie...I'm waiting on 4 right now from elsewhere in Oz - only one crime one (I do read other stuff too).

      If you have to send books within Australia ask your post office for pre-paid post bags. There's one for $5.30 that lets you post anywhere in Aus up to 500g (which is one large-ish paperback or a couple of those small 'cosy' size ones). There's another bag for $9.30 which allows you to post up to 3kg anywhere in the country. I've found it much cheaper than normal postage rates (especially the large bag for hardbacks).

      Hopefully there will be lots more moochers in Australia. I love the idea of books circulating and recycling.

      ReplyDelete
    2. Kerrie19 May 2008 at 20:41

      Thanks for the advice Bernadette. I've got some pre-paid bags, and I'm looking forward to get some points on the board.

      ReplyDelete
    3. Peter Rozovsky20 May 2008 at 05:21

      This sounds promising. Where is BookMooch based? Where are most of their listings from?
      ==============
      Detectives Beyond Borders
      "Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
      http://www.detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/

      ReplyDelete
    4. Bernadette20 May 2008 at 21:27

      Peter I think Book Mooch started in the US and that is where most of their members are. But it does appear to be growing in Australia - I have only been active for a month or so but I have had about half of my transactions from within Australia (and you don't have to interact with people in other countries but I choose to).

      ReplyDelete

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