A year and three months ago, I discovered BookMooch, and life, as I knew it, went flying on a crazy tangent.
1) My To Be Read (TBR) pile has over 200 (okay, so it’s nearly 300, but who’s counting?) books in it, and I acquire books faster than I can read them.
2) I have received nearly 500 books from the Philippines and all over the world, including the US, Canada, China, Japan, Singapore, Iran, Australia, UK, the Netherlands, Ireland, Finland, Germany, Italy, France, sweden, Trinidad and Tobago, Portugal, Brazil, and more, and sent over 500 books to these countries as well.
3) I have become acquainted with postal procedures and have ingratiated myself with my postmen (of my office and of my residence), postal workers and customs officer (who had a magical change of heart after I uhmm dangled a prospective subpoena in front of his nose), and have learned that snail mail still works! And that good things come to those who wait.
4) I have waded through more bargain book bins this year than my whole life combined, seeking out cheap books for my BookMooch inventory, because…
5) I have learned that one person’s trash is another person’s treasure, and that giving away the books I don’t want to keep to people who will love them and give them good homes is a most gratifying feeling, especially when a P5 (approx. $0.10 USD) is a book someone halfway across the world has been in search of for so long.
6) Even without my digital kitchen scale (a wonderful investment!) I have learned to approximate weight in 250g increments (because those are the weight classifications for surface mail) by holding objects in my palm, which comes in handy when picking out bargain books for mooching, eking out the last odd kilo in check-in baggage, and estimating the cost of fresh produce at the supermarket.
7) I have an excuse to stock up on heavy brown wrapping paper, catalog envelopes, packaging tape, book-sized plastic bags (for insulation), bubble wrap, scotch tape and markers to wrap mooches in (the same way I have an excuse to hit the bargain bookstore twice a week). I also have a stack of over 500 postcards (mostly from various counters here and in Singapore thanks to my sister dear!) for writing notes for my mooches.
8) I have gone through quite a few recyclable canvas bags that have burst due to the sheer number of books I stuffed into them… Once the handles literally popped off after I claimed 8 parcels at the post office!
9) I have made wonderful friends, such as the BookMoochers Pilipinas family, which holds MoochParties every so often to showcase the brilliance of our members (we have BookMooch Jeopardy, BookMooch auctions, bookswaps) and we’ve organized bargain bookstore warehouse raids too! I’ve also made wonderful friends abroad, like wired_lain in Japan who has been supplying me with the Japanese books (and chocolate and green tea and other odds and ends like a funny talking calculator and a Doraemon notepad) I want, Vee in California who has sent me a lot of wonderful books (and chocolate and coffee and pretzels!), and the countless other members who have gone out of their way to send me a book that I want.
11) I now have a growing collection of books I can’t read because they’re not in English but I love them all the same, including the film books of the Studio Ghibli films, and yes, my now-famous collection of international editions of Harry Potter (yes, it often induces some amazingly dexterous eye-rolling but I don’t care) which is now close to 80 books, including hmm, let’s see, Japanese, Chinese, contraband Persian, Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese, Latin, Italian, German, Spanish, Irish, British Kids, British Adult, US, Czech, Polish, Danish, Swedish, Croa
tian, Israeli, Jewish, Ancient Greek, and many more editions (one day I will blog about all of them, I promise)
My Harry Potter shelf13) My name is now a trademark in my book circles, because my irrational and obsessive habit of “upgrading” paperbacks into hardcovers, which my book club friends call “doing a Blooey”
BookMooch (www.bookmooch.com) is a free website where you can give away books you don’t need or want. In return, you get to “mooch” the books you want from other people.
John Buckman, former CEO and primary programmer of Lyris Technologies, and founder of online record label Magnatune, came up with the idea for the site because he needed more space for his books but couldn’t bring himself to throw books away.
“I had stacks of books on my shelves that have been read once, but will never read again. The local used bookstore would only be interested in a few of them, and will pay next to nothing for the books they do want. I figured there’s got to be a better use for perfectly good books” notes Buckman in an interview posted on the site.
“On the practical side, the opportunity to save money and free up shelf space is a motivation to use BookMooch. But not everything has to be about making profit,” Buckman explains. “Sometimes, it’s fun to just give a book to someone. It feels good to recommend a book to someone, to pass it on, so they’ll enjoy it.”
BookMooch also offers a solution for books that are hard to find, out of print, or not locally available, because you never know – somewhere in the world, someone could be willing to part with a copy of that book.
“BookMooch is like a giant bookstore, of all the bookshelves in people’s homes,” Buckman states. “By aggregating everyone’s home book collection, we should have the best selection of used books on the planet.”
How it works:
Basically, BookMooch works on a point system. In order for you to get the books you want, you need to earn points, which work as the BookMooch currency.
In your inventory, enter books that you’re willing to give away, and you get 1/10th of a point for each book. So for every 10 books in your inventory, you get 1 point.
Bookmooch has a built-in search engine that reflects if a book is available, the number of copies available, the users who are giving away the book, and even related editions of the book.
So when someone wants a book in your inventory, you respond to the request, and send the book to them. You are awarded one point for each book sent locally (taken from the requestor’s account), and 3 points if the book is sent to another country (2 from the requestor, 1 bonus point awarded by BookMooch for the effort of sending abroad).
While you shoulder the expense of sending a book to someone, you mooch the books you want for free. When you find a book you like and request it from a person who is willing to send it to you, points from your account get transferred to the sender’s account (1 point local, 2 points for international mooches). When you receive the book, you get another 1/10th point (.1) by leaving feedback for the sender.
If the book you want is not available, you can add it to your wishlist, and you automatically get an email notification once someone adds it (or an edition of the book) to their inventory. If you click the “get from Amazon” link in your wishlist instead of waiting for a free copy, BookMooch gets a small (5%) commission from Amazon.
My prize finds? I really can’t single out, there’ve been so many, especially for the hardcover fiend that I am. Let’s just say my present collection will not even be half of what it is now if not for BookMooch; scrolling through my blog entries, you’ll find that almost every other book in there was a mooch.
Sign up for BookMooch now, and mooch from me or thousands of other moochers all over the world. And if you need help getting started, we at BookMoochers Pilipinas will always be glad to show you the ropes and regale you with our best mooching stories.
Now off to what looks like a great Saturday. Don’t forget to switch off your lights for Earth Hour, everyone! :)