A new toy
I recently heard of BookMooch. The idea is you enter what books you have, get points by mailing them away, and then use your points to have people send you books.
Sounded great to me at first. I have a problem that's been growing over time, because I read about 2 or 3 books a week. My input has been Amazon and my output has been buying more bookshelves. My drawers at work are stuffed with books, the awkward extra plank above our pantry is now stacked with books, and it's only a matter of time.
Unfortunately BookMooch has such an awkward user interface I had to abandon it. Then I went to a talk by John BookMooch, founder of the project, who convinced me to give it another try. Now I just mailed off six books and am expecting a few in the mail myself. It's like ebay in the sense that the site can be absolutely terrible, unusable, flash yellow and purple at you, pop up irrelevant questions, and yet still be great if it provides a service that isn't available elsewhere.
Speaking of ebay it might be easier and less expensive in the long run to just sell off my old books. Already one popular paperback I mailed to a book store. :-/ Although I have heard the argument that if all you want is to get a good book into the hands of someone who will read it, you're best off leaving the book on the shelf at Barnes and Noble.
It makes some sense. Certainly the recommendations I press upon my reluctant roommates have a low rate of uptake.
;-)
Sounded great to me at first. I have a problem that's been growing over time, because I read about 2 or 3 books a week. My input has been Amazon and my output has been buying more bookshelves. My drawers at work are stuffed with books, the awkward extra plank above our pantry is now stacked with books, and it's only a matter of time.
Unfortunately BookMooch has such an awkward user interface I had to abandon it. Then I went to a talk by John BookMooch, founder of the project, who convinced me to give it another try. Now I just mailed off six books and am expecting a few in the mail myself. It's like ebay in the sense that the site can be absolutely terrible, unusable, flash yellow and purple at you, pop up irrelevant questions, and yet still be great if it provides a service that isn't available elsewhere.
Speaking of ebay it might be easier and less expensive in the long run to just sell off my old books. Already one popular paperback I mailed to a book store. :-/ Although I have heard the argument that if all you want is to get a good book into the hands of someone who will read it, you're best off leaving the book on the shelf at Barnes and Noble.
It makes some sense. Certainly the recommendations I press upon my reluctant roommates have a low rate of uptake.
;-)
posted by Kevin at
5:30 PM
2 Comments:
This post has been removed by the author.
By
Andrew, At
July 18, 2007 8:03 AM
This does seem like sort of a good idea. Unfortunately, it's a terrible waste of the world's resources. You might as well mail bricks.
An interesting related tidbit... for a long time, publishers have allowed booksellers to send books back to them that they didn't sell. They started allowing this in the Great Depression to keep the industry going. Unfortunately, the price of gas is putting a severe cramp in this style.
The book and print industry is dying, and I think using the internet to facilitate the mailing of books is a pretty hokey idea. Same thing with the CD trading service LaLa (used by friend Cass). Here's a link on the book industry:
http://www.writersweekly.com/the_latest_from_angelahoycom/002963_09212005.html
Reminds me of the narrator in Microserfs commenting that he and his roommates all ordered everything by 1-800 number. Ever heard of a library?
By
Andrew, At
July 18, 2007 8:06 AM
Post a Comment
<< Home