As a former bookseller, if you think used booksellers as a whole are primarily driven by profit, you probably don’t know very many! (grin).

Some online booksellers fit the evaluation posted above by Nick, but they tend to be johnny-come-latelys and not “lifers”.

Traditionally, bookselling is a passion and a profession, and a tough way to make a living. Get a copy of “The Bookman’s Wake” by John Dunning, a tightly written mystery novel which can tell you how most of these people have built their entire businesses – taking a chance on a box of books and yes, doing LOTS of bartering with other stores, and even with individuals called “book scouts”. Bartering and trust, developing a reputation for quality and fair dealing, was and is a big core of the old bookselling world.

Most booksellers stuck with it for the same reason people stick with writing or other arts – they love books. If they were out to make big or even moderately big bucks they would have done better to become sanitation engineers, work for the government, or open a dry cleaning shop. That’s even more true with the higher rents and energy costs in many downtown corridors, and the ability of people to get books cheaply online. The booksellers that will survive are generally those who specialize and build a good relationship with their customers, making their store a destination — great example is Murder by the Book here in Houston — again, those who really love what they do, where it is a passion. Many of these older gents (and a few ladies) would be horrified to learn that they are being lumped in with the folks who sell books for a penny on Amazon.

While there are literally thousands and thousands of specialized and used booksellers with 100s to low thousands of books available, there are probably only a few hundred online booksellers who have many thousands of books available, disdainfully referred to by the long-time dealers as “”penny sellers” or “postage sellers” (since they make their profit through postage and handling costs).” I doubt many of them will want to go to Bookmooch. The assumption is that they would post crap, and then get something rare that they can trade for big bucks. Except that goes against their business model.

These pennyseller businesses pay fractions of a cent for books by John Grisham, etc., then arrange with companies like UPS to charge them a lower rate for postage. It’s all about volume. They make money shipping hundreds of books a day but only making $1-3 profit on each one. Think about how long it takes to pull and then wrap, then post a few thousand books a week, but only have the profit coming in to run a tight skeleton crew, often a husband and wife and part-time staff. These people usually don’t have the time or knowledge to request a rare hardback and then sell it for big bucks. That’s why you see some people with scanners at FOPL (friends of the public library) sales. Sometimes they work for a big company like Powell’s. Either way, they don’t know enough about books or have a specialty where they can judge what the books are worth on sight; they need tools. Books are just another commodity to them. When they do find some rare books, penny sellers are as likely to sell them dirt cheap on Amazon or their site, because their profit model is about high volume and making money off the postage markup, not holding something until the right buyer comes along. This is a very labor-intensive, tough way to make a living — for a good example of what this does to ya, read about Jay and Marie, the old one cent cd team on eBay, who worked 7 day, 12 hour weeks for years.

The more traditional bookselling folks would be perfectly good BM citizens. Let’s say you’re a dealer from the old school and run a tiny shop in Great Barrington. You bartered and bought some boxes of books from other sellers and folks who walked in off the street. In those boxes, you have some books that are not going to sell, because they’re paperback mysteries, and your store specializes in nonfiction books about New England, and military history. Someone orders a copy of “Murder Must Advertise” from you – a reprint in great condition that would cost $9 on Amazon – and you send it to them. You turn around and request a Bruce Catton book, one that there are many copies of on Bookmooch, not rare, not hard to find, but which you think will appeal to your walk-in customers, and which you can sell for $4. It might take you seven months to sell that book, though. Whereas the person who gets the “Murder Must Advertise” might have gotten a great $9 book in trade for something they got at a garage sale last month for 90 cents. And, you know, as long as everyone trades the books they claim to have, and doesn’t game the system, they’re both okay. How do you know, after all, that the person who got “Murder Must Advertise” might not go and sell it on eBay for $6, or for $2 at a garage sale? The point is, we don’t know.

Believe me when I say it is unfair to assume all stores and sellers would join BM for the same reason. One of my acquaintances is a store owner in rural Canada who has to drive many hours to stock her store. Bookmooch would give her a chance to barter for books her local customers want to read. Like the average reader who participates, she has no way of competing with a big “penny seller” who can afford to buy a dump truck full of mass market paperbacks.

Just want what is best for the community!

We are dealing with one main problem: the situation of one or more large-volume booksellers joining the site (we will use the 75,000 book example for numbers).

By joining the site, they will list the inventory they intend for bookmoochers to have access to (we’ll assume the 75,000). By doing this they do indeed, under the current system, receive an initial 7,500 points at a cost of nothing to them. At the same time they will make available for the bookmooch community 75,000 books. All seems well in the world with no changes to our system.

The problems come in when you evaluate a bookseller. The point that many people are missing is that a bookseller is a business. Ruling out CEO insanity, the business will ALWAYS keep a monetary profit in mind. Think of yourselves for a moment. If you owned a profitable system (say a website) and intended to make money with it via the bookmooch system (assume you’re not a charitable person), would you ever give away books to a free community, when the returns would be less? You wouldn’t. You will only mooch books of value to the business, and you will ONLY LIST BOOKS… that are not of value to the business, which means they’re not selling. Granted, some of these books may be desirable by the community. The great majority will likely not be.

This is the evaluation of a business. The business isn’t joining our site because “aww, we can be nice to these people and make the world a better book-place”. The BUSINESS is joining the site because they believe there is potential for their business in it, and money for them (aka money FROM us).

With this model in mind, they will make available for the bookmooch community (in theory) 75,000 less-than-desirable books as well as receive 7,500 points at no cost to them. This translates into 7,500 books for them, with a minimal of mooches being sent out. If I was a hardcore business CEO, I sure as hell would be happy with that.

Okay, so we can still let them join, we simply need to a develop a system that eliminates the ability of the businesses to leech off our community. The foremost point in people’s minds is “they will have a potentially massive inventory giving them lots of free books to start”. Alright, the intent of the points-for-listing system is to give everyone a start. So to start, we set a hard limit that applies to everyone.

Now I give out my non-objective suggestions. This is just a thrown-out number, let’s say 5. 5 free books for not spending a coin for anyone. I say that’s fairly reasonable and most people do not (and probably should not) violate that. So upon joining, you can get five books for free for listing 50 to the community, bad or not. After that, no more listing points. Additionally (I think this is a new suggestion) no more ratios at all!

Well how would that work? Well with no listing points, inventory size will not affect a moocher’s usefulness on bookmooch except for your initial contribution, and even that is capped with my suggestion (list 20, get 2; list 50, get 5; list one million, get 5). The point system handles itself quite well. Let’s say the average moocher, from my observation, gives 1:1. They’ll progress maybe 2.5:1, 2:1, 1.5:1, eventually just 1:1 because they’ll get a point for giving a point (and an extra one per 10 for good feedback). Internationals will also keep their wonderful 3-point system because while they get 3 points for each 1 they send, they are spending ~3 times the money to mail it. So they get three domestic books (valued at ~$2 in shipping) for the cost of one international book (valued at ~$6 or even more in shipping). For international bookmooching to work, the ratio system has to either not exist, or be at minimum 3:1.

By simply capping the 1/10-point listing bonus, it doesn’t affect long-time bookmoochers or normal-sized inventoried newcomers. It only affects massive-sized inventories. So could someone take advantage of this system?

Business comes in, lists 75,000 books. They get 5 points. They use their 5 points, get their 5 books. Now if they list crappy stock, they may get say, 50-100 mooches (50-100 points) that they can only use accordingly. If they list awesome stock, this may get them 1000-5000 mooches, giving them far more points.

Businesses still can use our books, but not without giving us something too. That is my analysis of my proposal: cap on the inventory listing 1/10th point system for the lifetime of an account. Completely get rid of the ratio system. The point system is a stable and proper economy, but only without the infinite listing points.

Last words: sorry its so long, but at least no one will doubt where the argument stands

Allowing bookstores on will only increase the number of books available; I think that is a very good thing. I like bookstores and allowing them on bookmooch would seem to make both the bookstores and bookmooch better.