BookMooch
BookMooch is an online community for exchanging used books, created by Magnatune and Lyris founder John Buckman. The website charges no fees to its users.
BookMooch was in private beta starting on July 23, 2006; it became publicly available on August 6, 2006, and has since been featured in publications such as CNet News[1], The Inquirer[2], Yahoo Picks [3] and USA Today[4].
Currency system
BookMooch uses a currency system to allow trading within the community rather than a direct exchange system.[5] However, the system used is more sophisticated than that of PaperBackSwap, and currency is injected into the system through a variety of means other than signing up. Unlike PaperBackSwap, BookMooch is explicitly global in scope (PaperBackSwap is restricted to the USA) and encourages international book swapping by a novel use of points: a book from another country costs 2 points, while the sender gets 3 points, to help defray the increased postage cost.
Every book added to the system will earn users 0.1 points, as will acknowledging receipt of a book. Giving books away will also award the user 1 point if sent within their country, and 3 points if sent to another country.
Ways to consume points include receiving a book, which will cost either 1 or 2 points depending on whether the book comes from within or outside of their country. Note that currency is injected into the system whenever a user adds a book (0.1 points), acknowledges receipt (0.1 points), or gives away a book to another country (1 point injected).
BookMooch works with a number of charities who want to pick specific books, such as Books for Prisons, Public Libraries, Couples Counseling and Support for new Mothers. Members are invited to give points to charitable funds where BookMooch then distributes the points, or to specific charities [6] and this appears to be a popular feature of the site. [7]
BookMooch is largely a non-commercial site, not charging any membership or use fees. All revenue is from commission acquired when users purchase a book from Amazon.com through the site, but the founder has stated that there is no need for BookMooch to generate profit.[8]. The founder refers to this as "making money by accident" and that as of January 1, 2007 for approximately every 100 books mooched (traded for free) one book is purchased at Amazon.com.
BookMooch features an unusual feature called the MoochBar [9] which is a web browser short-cut, permiting users to browse the Amazon.com web site for books, and instead of pressing Amazon's "buy it now" button, the user clicks the "mooch" button to obtain the current Amazon book for free from BookMooch. If the book is not currently available from BookMooch, the user has the option of adding the book to a wishlist, to be notified when the book is available, and thus obtained for free rather than purchased at Amazon.
The book-cataloging web site LibraryThing integrates with BookMooch (and vice versa) [10]. Books received on BookMooch can be added directly to your personal LibraryThing catalog, and from LibraryThing, whenever a book is available on one of their supported book-swapping sites, the direct link is given from within LibraryThing's web site. [11]
Notes
- ^ See http://www.bookmooch.com/about/images/press_cnet.gif
- ^ See http://www.bookmooch.com/about/images/press_inquirer.gif
- ^ See http://picks.yahoo.com/picks/i/20061223.html
- ^ See http://www.bookmooch.com/about/images/press_maney.gif
- ^ See http://www.bookmooch.com/about/points
- ^ See http://bookmooch.com/m/charity
- ^ See http://bookmooch.com/about/stats_show?chart=total_points_of_charity_received
- ^ See http://bookmooch.com/about/images/press_inquirer.gif
- ^ See http://www.bookmooch.com/moochbar
- ^ See http://www.librarything.com/blog/2006/09/arrr-swap-books.php
- ^ See http://www.librarything.com/work-swap/8110
See also
External link
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