CS Magazine Book, music Reviews
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You like books, okay, you LOVE books! Look at all those used books you own, sitting there on shelves. Most you won't read again, right? You can't throw them out -- that's a waste! It's hard to sell them. Wouldn't you like to find them new homes, and get some other used books in exchange? Why spend lots of money on new books? Someone has the book you want, and is willing to give away or swap it!
BookMooch is a community for exchanging used books. Like CouchSurfing, it's a grass roots project, that's not for profit. It's goal is to link book lovers together, recycle books, saving cost and paper resources. The two sites, both international, are similar in spirit. Friendships and learning flourish with both online communities.
BookMooch lets you give away books you no longer need in exchange for books you really want. Best of all, it's FREE! No cost: there is no cost to join or use this web site: your only cost is mailing your books to others. (Most members use a cheaper book rate, or Media Mail in the U.S., when available).
Give & receive: Every time you give someone a book, you earn a point and can get any book you want from anyone else at BookMooch. Once you've read a book, you can keep it forever or put it back into BookMooch for someone else, as you wish.
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 five you receive.
Help charities: you can also give your points to charities we work with, such as children's hospitals (so a sick kid can get a free book delivered to their bed), Library funds, literacy projects, or others.
World wide: You can request books from other countries, in other languages. You receive 3 points when you send a book out of your country, to help compensate you for the greater mailing cost, but it only costs the moocher 2 points to get the book. John Buckman, who runs BookMooch, lives both in California and London, England, and was frustrated by the vast number of books that were printed in just one country but not any another, or only after several years. Postal cost assistance is available currently from the USA, UK and France (let us know if you have a URL to a postal rate web calculator for your country).
Wishlist: you can keep a "book wish list" that will automatically arrive to you when you have the points and/or the book becomes available in our catalog.
All books: Bookmooch's goal is to make more use out of all books, to help keep books from becoming unavailable. The worst thing that can happen to a book is for no-one to be able to read it.
Feedback score: each time you receive a book, you can leave feedback with the sender, just like how eBay does it. If you keep your feedback score up, people are most likely to help you out when you ask for a book.
How BookMooch pays its bills: It taps into Amazon's book database, and if you follow an Amazon link from our web site, we receive a commission from Amazon if you buy that book instead of getting it free from BookMooch.
If you're passionate about books, you know how emotionally difficult it is to throw a book away, even if you will never read it again. You want to find a good home for your books, have them find someone who appreciates them. Also, you may be interested in trying a lot of books out, and keep the ones that are great. It's a great crime to have a book disappear, out of print, for none to read. BookMooch keeps books in circulation, and finds new readers for them.
And you can make friends and share books on topics where you share interests. There is a growing travel book section, too! You know you'll need a good book for that plane, train or bus ride, or just to curl up on someone's couch with, and read!
