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

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

ferociouskitty — Mon, 07 Aug 2006 08:40:59 -0800

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

By: Baby_Balrog

Baby_Balrog — Mon, 07 Aug 2006 08:53:20 -0800

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.

By: Eideteker

Eideteker — Mon, 07 Aug 2006 08:59:13 -0800

Book donations.

By: gottabefunky

gottabefunky — Mon, 07 Aug 2006 09:00:34 -0800

Everyone wins! Except publishers, of course. But still, way cool idea.

By: Drunken_munky

Drunken_munky — Mon, 07 Aug 2006 09:15:32 -0800

Wont the shipping costs for this be a problem, though? Books are heavy.

By: ferociouskitty

ferociouskitty — Mon, 07 Aug 2006 09:18:59 -0800

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!

By: horsemuth

horsemuth — Mon, 07 Aug 2006 09:56:11 -0800

By: horsemuth

horsemuth — Mon, 07 Aug 2006 10:05:37 -0800

Great link Eideteker! (ferociouskitty, too)

By: bwerdmuller

bwerdmuller — Mon, 07 Aug 2006 10:05:50 -0800

Bookcrossing is probably worth a mention here, being a well-loved and fairly long-standing community.

By: stbalbach

stbalbach — Mon, 07 Aug 2006 11:08:15 -0800

LibraryThing is another good book site.

By: IndigoJones

IndigoJones — Mon, 07 Aug 2006 11:19:07 -0800

Mrs Jones will be happy about books going out. Coming in.... (Good work, though, and thanks)

By: illovich

illovich — Mon, 07 Aug 2006 12:36:42 -0800

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.

By: PinkStainlessTail

PinkStainlessTail — Mon, 07 Aug 2006 12:48:29 -0800

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.

By: zoinks

zoinks — Mon, 07 Aug 2006 13:01:13 -0800

A Baltimore bricks-and-mortar version that is freakin' great.

By: indiebass

indiebass — Mon, 07 Aug 2006 15:54:23 -0800

This is exactly like the old Swappingtons site...

By: Jilder

Jilder — Mon, 07 Aug 2006 20:09:29 -0800

What a marvellous idea! And it's international, too! *goes and squints at her shelves to see what she can clear*

By: vorfeed

vorfeed — Mon, 07 Aug 2006 22:23:39 -0800

Great post, thank you! Four of my long-languishing books are already spoken for!

By: etoile

etoile — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 07:00:22 -0800

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.

By: kimdog

kimdog — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 12:05:15 -0800

Count me in!

By: etoile

etoile — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 12:14:33 -0800

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.

By: rolypolyman

rolypolyman — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 18:57:45 -0800

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.

By: solid-one-love

solid-one-love — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 13:52:20 -0800

rolypolyman: I don't think so. The 5:1 send/receive ratio will take care of that in the long run.