BookMooch

August 23rd, 2006

I got an e-mail from John Buckman, who runs a site called BookMooch, which he describes as a “A community for used book exchange”. I had seen it before but didn’t get a chance to play with with it and I don’t now. I took a look at the about page and saw this:

“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 two you receive.”

This only makes sense when using social tools that involve non-cash exchange of material goods. You have to be in it to win it, so to speak.

John says that he has 5,000 members so far, after only two weeks of being open. Not bad.

John relies on Amazon (affiliate program, I assume) to pay his bills, which probably won’t work unless he gets many more users. Even Library Thing couldn’t survive on Amazon alone.

One day, I’ll find time to play more with BookMooch

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