Bookmooch: Share your books

Book sharing service Bookmooch.com may only have gone live a couple of months ago, but it already boasts over 100,000 books and 11,000 members.

The site allows users to give away unwanted books to other users, for which they receive points to spend on ‘mooching’ books they [i]do[/i] want. It’s a simple idea that has been implemented brilliantly.

My copy of The Female Man, for example, had gone unread and unwanted for too many years. I think I originally bought it just to impress college girls with my feminist sensibilities. But Caroline from France actually wanted to read it, and for the price of European postage I got to receive three points — enough to mooch one book internationally or three from the UK.

Financially, Bookmooch plans to support itself with Amazon commissions, which seems reasonable given its very tight integration of the Amazon API.

The only doubt I have over the viability of the Bookmooch system concerns the way points are allocated. At present, users receive 1/10th of a point whenever they give feedback or offer a book. There’s a sort of ‘point inflation’ built into the system, which is great for stimulating the growth of the community but which might resemble a pyramid scheme when that growth eventually slows or stops

For example, Caroline in France only spent two points to mooch my feminist jeremiad; I received three. Every international transaction magics a point from thin air into the mooch-economy.

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That said, point-inflation spurs growth, which is all-important for a start-up like this, and besides, the points system has been continually tweaked since the site launched. It is quite likely that founder John Buckman (of Magnatunes fame) will have a chance to apply some Alan Greenspan discipline long before growth falters – which, looking at the enthused and growing community and buzz surrounding the service, could be some way off.

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