I wish that I could find more titles on natural history, birds, plants. The browsing access is not as easy as one would like. I also wish that brief listings would always indicate if a title were paper or hardbound. I am generally most interested in hardbacks and condition is often a real consideration…bibliophile that I am.

I have found this group immensely entertaining and am grateful for the NY Times article where it was described

I think a better wording would be, “Don’t put out-of date Technical books and textbooks on Bookmooch”. But that’s not always true. Let’s say you have a copy of Adobe Photoshop 2. A book on Adobe Photoshop 5 wouldn’t be as helpful as an earlier edition meant for the version you have. On the other hand, a 20 year old encyclopedia would be pretty useless.

He also wrote:
>”In general, don’t put classics or best-sellers on Bookmooch.”

I had a pile of Classics. I listed them up. They’re all gone now. Students grab them up, but some people want them for the same reason I bought them in the first place – they’ve heard about them all their lives but never read them.

Best sellers: Today’s Best Sellers – yes, do post them. Last year’s Best Sellers… If there’s more than 5 copies, forget it.

“I fear Internet entrepreneurs may be taking advantage…”

If someone doesn’t want to give away a book, they wouldn’t have listed it in the first place. I personally have made a conscious decision to give away my books rather than sell them. I care a little if I’m merely stocking someone else’s store, but I can control that by delisting a book, or turning down a mooch request if I think the moocher is a reseller. I’ve never had to do that on any of the 3 book trading sites I’m a member of.

This admitted NY provincialist also forgets that not everyone lives in Manhattan 3 blocks from a used book store. Amazon and the mega-bookstores have put the used bookstore out of business in many small towns, if the town even had a used bookstore in the first place. For some folks, BM *is* their “local” used book store.

“So far, I’ve sent out four books, and no one has sent me any on my wish list…”

You do need to have a very sizeable wish list to statistically have anything that someone else might also happen to be giving away. There is what I call a “new library” phenomenon on all trading sites: when you are fresh meat and list your books, odds are that somewhere among the thousands of existing traders are sizable wish lists that have built up over time, and your choicest offerings fly off the shelf in the first day. Then you have to wait weeks or months for subsequent requests.

“[long, ponderous paragraph on having given more books than received]”

This did happen to me on another trading site. I have 44 points over there that I can’t spend because there’s nothing posted that I would want. I’ve de-listed almost all my books from that site until I bring my points way down (which may never happen.) But in the end, it was my choice how much “bank” I built up, and when I de-listed my available books.

[..have the moochers pay postage... ...how do you insure that the moochee, having received payment, sends the book...]

This may sound like a good idea, and I imagine new traders sometimes don’t understand why they not only have to give away their book, but also have to pay postage. But if you keep your mooch ration close to 1, in the end it’s all a wash. So why incur the cost of building an e-commerce system that handles REAL money? And James is writing an article for a financial magazine Fortune that’s syndicated to CNN Money and he’s never heard of the concept of “escrow”?

Here are a few promised tips:

I disagree with Leonard about not posting older editions of books. I’ve been dieing for a copy, any copy, of several O’Reilly books. I want to learn PHP and MySQL, and I don’t care if I start of learning older stuff. Yet, if not even the old editions are available, I’m never going to get to start learning (unless I go to Amazon the mega-bookstore and buy the book, which defeats the whole point.) So please post your old editions. If the requester has an issue with that, he or she can ask before you send it.

Do keep a very large wish list if you hope to get anything on a regular basis!

And now to my promised complaint:

It’s almost impossible to browse for books on BM. The long lists of books alphabetical by author are impossible to browse if I’m not familiar with the author. Maybe I just don’t “get” the tagging system or something. If I don’t already know that a book exists and separately add it on my wish list, I’ll never be able to actually find an available book on BM. A typical hierarchical system would help greatly!

I’m still relatively new to the BookMooch community, but I wouldn’t ever think of leaving.

Nor was there any way to respond to his article on the money.cnn.com / Fortune site, to clarify the misinformation/misunderstanding.

Frankly, when a newspaper published an article of mine, that mistakenly referred to the Yankees as the “Boys of Summer” – a reference in passing that had nothing to do with the article – you can bet we not only got mail… but a retraction from our editor. And you can imagine the TONE of the mail…grin… so I really don’t have much patience with a critic complaining at length about something he misunderstood, but avoiding criticism or corrections.

I know he also has been criticized for discussions on money, portfolio advice, etc., which might explain why he didn’t want to share a way of getting in touch with him…

But as a public person and journalist whose company benefited in traffic, page views, ad views, etc., from the article he wrote, after his plug here, it is disingenuous for him not to give a place for people to respond, and for the Bookmooch community to defend themselves to readers of his article.

I’m thinking that people like, say, my dad – who has piles of books he needs to get rid of, but has never joined a trading site – are the audience for this article. They would get spooked by the negative tone and have no way of reading factual corrections from the thousands who have used Bookmooch safely and happily.

When I saw the piece about BookMooch on NBC’s Today Show, I was excited. My first day on BookMooch I sent out seven books. I have a hard time keeping twenty books on my inventory. Also, I’ve only had one person not take a book because it wasn’t in mint condition (he really did want mint condition, the only thing wrong with the book was a bent cover corner.)

The only thing I don’t like with BookMooch is inactive accounts. Waiting in limbo for a book, mooching it from another person, and spending 2 points for the book, is a pain. But, that’s like the rest of life. Some people take care and attend to their community, others only look to them when they want something. In that, BookMooch, Ebay, MySpace, and any other online community have their suckers and their contributors.