I'll give you an Oprah selection for that Austen.

August 7, 2006 8:40 AM

Bookmooch lets you give away your old books to a loving, caring home. Oh, and you can get used books for free too. Everyone wins! via
posted by ferociouskitty (21 comments total)

Brilliant! I have an entire shelf in my office that I'm registering as we speak.
I'll have enough for 3.5 books!

Fantastic post.
posted by Baby_Balrog at 8:53 AM on August 7, 2006

Book donations.
posted by Eideteker at 8:59 AM on August 7, 2006 [1 favorite]

Everyone wins!

Except publishers, of course.

But still, way cool idea.
posted by gottabefunky at 9:00 AM on August 7, 2006

Wont the shipping costs for this be a problem, though? Books are heavy.
posted by Drunken_munky at 9:15 AM on August 7, 2006

Shipping most paperbacks cross-country with media mail costs about $1.50. Which is way less than I normally accumulate in overdue fines from the library!
posted by ferociouskitty at 9:18 AM on August 7, 2006

See also: Paperback Swap
posted by horsemuth at 9:56 AM on August 7, 2006

Great link Eideteker! (ferociouskitty, too)
posted by horsemuth at 10:05 AM on August 7, 2006

Bookcrossing is probably worth a mention here, being a well-loved and fairly long-standing community.
posted by bwerdmuller at 10:05 AM on August 7, 2006

LibraryThing is another good book site.
posted by stbalbach at 11:08 AM on August 7, 2006

Mrs Jones will be happy about books going out. Coming in....

(Good work, though, and thanks)
posted by IndigoJones at 11:19 AM on August 7, 2006

I'll chime in on the part of Title Trader which has been pretty good for my family. To answer the postage question, it's true that you have to pay postage to send someone a book, but they (they being the community as a whole) pay postage when you receive a book, so it all works out. Obviously you can quibble that people who receive the really heavy books win over the folks who recive tiny paperbacks, but really... that's besides the point.
posted by illovich at 12:36 PM on August 7, 2006

Those "Topics" are a mess. Why are all of these books marked as 19th Century? Even assuming it refers to content and not publishing date, Confessions of a Shopaholic shouldn't be on there.
posted by PinkStainlessTail at 12:48 PM on August 7, 2006

A Baltimore bricks-and-mortar version that is freakin' great.
posted by zoinks at 1:01 PM on August 7, 2006 [1 favorite]

This is exactly like the old Swappingtons site...
posted by indiebass at 3:54 PM on August 7, 2006

What a marvellous idea! And it's international, too! *goes and squints at her shelves to see what she can clear*
posted by Jilder at 8:09 PM on August 7, 2006

Great post, thank you! Four of my long-languishing books are already spoken for!
posted by vorfeed at 10:23 PM on August 7, 2006

I love the BookThing in Baltimore. Totally awesome, you can find some real gems there. Lots of crap too, but the occasional great find.

I like Bookins for long-distance book sharing, because you print the postage from any standard printer. I think $3.95/book might be a little higher than necessary, though.
posted by etoile at 7:00 AM on August 8, 2006

Count me in!
posted by kimdog at 12:05 PM on August 8, 2006

I've spent the past four hours playing with BookMooch, and there's still a LOT of kinks being worked out. A whole lot of them. I don't think it's quite ready for primetime, but soon.
posted by etoile at 12:14 PM on August 8, 2006

Just curious -- won't this be a place for merchants to soak up all the expensive titles and sell them elsewhere, returning cheap paperbacks to the community? Just trying to see how this won't get abused.
posted by rolypolyman at 6:57 PM on August 8, 2006

rolypolyman: I don't think so. The 5:1 send/receive ratio will take care of that in the long run.
posted by solid-one-love at 1:52 PM on August 11, 2006