BookMooch works!

When I joined BookMooch I must admit I was a bit skeptical about whether it held much for me. It was suggested to me by Bernadette who monitors and comments on my blog postings quite often.
Their lovely graphic explains it all:


I'm still a BookMooch newbie in terms of the transactions I've made. Originally I made 18 books available and that gave me 1.8 points to play with. You get points for sending books off to people and use points when you receive books. You can choose to just send books within your own country, but there are rewards (triple points) for sending books overseas, which of course is more expensive for you.

What made me doubtful about whether it would work for me was that the Australian BookMooch "arena" might be so much smaller. You can confine your search to books available in Australia or you can search the wider world. There's a "wishlist" page too where you can list books you would like.

Anyway I have accepted requests from fellow Moochers and sent books overseas. So far 4 books I've sent have arrived at their new homes, 2 to the US, 1 to Ireland, and 1 here in Australia. Two more are on their way- 1 to Australia, the other to Greece.
So far I have received 2 from people in Australia. 3 more from Australia are in their way, and one is to come from Canada.

There are rules. For instance, you have to send out at least 1 book for every 2 you receive. If you don't keep this ratio up, you won't be able to mooch any books, even if you have the points, until you improve your ratio.

Points summary:

Action	Points
Add a book to inventory	+ 1/10th
Give away book (within your country)	+ 1
Give away book (to another country)	+ 3
Mooch a book (within your country)	- 1
Mooch a book (from another country)	- 2
Acknowledge receiving a book you mooched	+ 1/10th

I must comment too on how helpful people have been. My first Mooch "friend" was incredibly informative when she realised that I was mooching my first book. When I had a mild technical problem I got "personalised" service from the help desk, who promptly sorted the problem out. Then there are some impressive statistics about the number of members, number of books listed, and numbers of books "given" over the last 2 years.

Perhaps, like me, you probably need to add to Mt. TBR like a hole in the head as the saying goes, but if you have surplus books lying around, you could give it a go.