I’m John Buckman, the founder, owner, and head dish washer at BookMooch (i.e., I do everything here). I also run the online record label Magnatune.com and I’m a member of the board of directors of Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Open Rights Group. Before all this fun stuff I founded and ran Lyris for a dozen years, and sold it in 2005.
For more about me, check out my Wikipedia bio.
I read every single comment on this blog, but most of the time, because there are so many, I don’t respond personally. But, you can be sure that everything you write here is read by me, and a lot of it ends up in my bookmooch-project-organizer (aka the “todo list”).
You can also email BookMooch tech support, or email me.
April 11, 2007 at 11:44 pm
How about offering an RSS feed for the blog? I read them in an aggregator. Thanks.
April 12, 2007 at 12:34 am
There is an RSS feed at
http://blog.bookmooch.com/feed/
But you wouldn’t know that, since it’s not linked anywhere (ie, it’s undocumented)
I’m using the wordpress blog service, and I can’t figure out how to edit the home/about buttons on the menu to have a RSS feed link, or perhaps on the bottom.
Any wordpress gurus out there who can explain to me how to make the RSS feed for this blog visible to un-logged-in readers?
May 24, 2007 at 4:09 pm
Hi John,
how about introducing an option “I will send books within the European Union”, in addition to “worldwide”/”my country”?
I found several bookmoochers from Europe (including me) that are reluctant to send long-distance other than occasionally because of unreasonable shipping costs to countries outside Europe. Whereas within the EU shipping costs are quite the same, be it to Finland or to Spain.
August 5, 2007 at 1:07 am
John,
Just a comment/suggestion: I have a lot of mooch requests at a time. It’d be really handy if there was a page on which I could view the addresses of the requesters, or better yet, an application– cgi, maybe?– that would not only make a page of the addresses, but format them so I could simply print and paste or print them onto sticker stock.
Thanks a lot for a terrific site!
Seth Matthew
August 27, 2007 at 8:39 am
Hi John,
I actually mooched a book from you a few months ago (Greg Egan’s Diaspora), but I’m commenting with a quick question:
- Do you have any plans to develop a Facebook application that would automatically show your moochable books in the same way that you already can do on a blog?
There was an article on Techcrunch (http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/08/23/facebook-integrates-book-swap-feature-into-marketplace/), which prompted this thought. I’d hate to see Bookmooch miss out on a potentially explosive growth opportunity.
August 27, 2007 at 2:31 pm
I’d love to have a Facebook / BookMooch plugin, but I’m too short for time to write it. If someone wants to do it, I can support them (ie, via the api) and even pay them for the effort.
-john
September 6, 2007 at 2:22 pm
Hi John,
Just curious… when a book becomes available to mooch, are the email alerts sent out in alphabetical order? I am a “T” and being at the end of the alphabet has plagued me my entire life. I know people are quick to mooch books on this site, but for some reason I feel like I am one of the last to receive the emails… trust me I react as soon as I get one! If this is the case and the emails are in fact sent out alphabetically, is there any way to send them out in a random order so that the end-of-the-alphabeters (like me) have a better chance at getting popular books? Thanks!
- Leigh Anna
September 9, 2007 at 1:57 pm
John, I can help you find a good Facebook programmer if you want to do that app right away. I too am obsessed with Facebook and I love Bookmooch. If you want, please contact me at isabel at isabel hilborn dot com.
September 14, 2007 at 5:02 pm
Wow, I love the idea of a facebook application. That would be really helpful, not to mention cool.
September 24, 2007 at 7:52 pm
John, you’re the greatest!!! I love Bookmooch!!! My son and I have been on for a few months and are addicted . . . it’s where I go first when I’m online–even before I check my email!
My questions is, where can I get some of those cute Bookmooch business card/bookmarks? I’d love to pass them around to my book loving friends!
Thanks for creating Bookmooch!
October 2, 2007 at 1:12 am
Hey John,
For the past month or so I’ve been refusing to send books to Bookmoochers who themselves refuse to send books outside their own country, and had a notice in my public bio to that effect. I started doing this because it’s been so frustrating to find a book I really want to mooch, only to discover that the Bookmoocher refuses to send it to me because I’m not in their country. I believe that Bookmooch’s awarding of 3 points (instead of only 1) for international mooches is more than equitable, and I instituted the policy in an attempt to get fellow Bookmoochers to rethink their decision. Several Bookmoochers have congratulated me for taking this stand, and I’ve seen other Bookmoochers with the same policy statement in their bios also.
However, tonight I was warned by Dave from Bookmooch that my policy is discriminatory (he actually compared it to racism and sexism, which made me laugh out loud) and that I must change it or be suspended. Can you weigh in on this please? How is it **not** discrimination akin to racism for a Bookmoocher to refuse to ship worldwide yet it **is** discrimination akin to racism for me to elect not to ship to them???????
I would suggest that Bookmooch itself institute an easy means for its members to select my now-discontinued practice (of refusing to ship to Bookmoochers who themselves only ship within their country). Or, alternately, make it **impossible** for a Bookmoocher to refuse to ship worldwide.
I have reluctantly changed my public bio statements, and thus will begrudgingly ship to those Bookmoochers who for whatever reason wouldn’t ship to me, but I really would like to see this issue discussed. I’m looking forward to your response. Thanks!
Shawn
October 2, 2007 at 7:42 am
re: refusing to send books to Bookmoochers who themselves refuse to send books outside their own country
This topic was brought up on the bm-discuss list in the fall of 2006, and there was an extensive conversation about it.
Some people (including myself) were on the “treat your neighbor as you would want to be treated” camp, and wanted BM to nto allow mooching from foreign countries by people who won’t themselves send books to other countries.
However, the opposition (people who wanted no change) had a really good point: they are already being compensated with 3 points for the cross-country mooch, AND there aren’t enough people mooching their inventory as it is. This group of people felt that they wanted as many people to mooch their books as possible, so they can earn points, and get books themselves.
I thought the opposition had a really good point, not enough to sway my own personal position (grin) but enough to understand that BookMooch should not enforce a policy on this.
I should emphasize that what my personal opinion is, and what BookMooch should do, are two separate things: the community really runs the policies that get enacted.
So, I’m not likely to change BookMooch to enforce your preference of not sending to other countries to those who refuse to do this themselves. It’s certainly your right to refuse mooches, but the community, over time, has decided that refusing mooches on principles isn’t a friendly thing to do, and wants people not to do this.
More to the point, I think BookMooch should be a fun, friendly, all-about-books-and-swapping experience, and not a stage for political positions, trying to change people’s minds to your opinion, and avoiding negativity as much as possible.
So yes, I’d prefer that the decision to “refuse a mooch” be limited to evaluating the moocher’s good behavior, reliability, etc.
-john
October 19, 2007 at 10:14 pm
It would be great if we could print out a label with the recipient’s name and barcoded with delivery confirmation on media mail when accepting a mooch! The computer generated delivery confirmation is much less costly than when purchased at the post office!
This is a wonderful trading community and I am so happy to have found it, thanks!
October 25, 2007 at 2:38 am
This is the only place I could find to contact you and I’m not sure it’s the right spot.
I’m still new to bookmooch and there are obviously nuances to this whole system. On Monday I was bookmooched - 4 books from the same person (the 4 Red Rock series in my inventory). I accepted right away and sent her an email that I would mail them on Tuesday. I didn’t get to it until this morning (Wednesday) and tonight I receive an email from her to cancel. Now bookmooch has put them back in my inventory, taken away my points and 4 brand new books are on the way to leigha. This really stinks. I emailed her. I just think it’s wrong that she would cancel 48 hours after I said I would send them!
Also, just for the record, my histroy is good accept for the blemishes where it says I rejected requests. That was a glitch in the first week and you all fixed it. I know I’m being anal, but I would appreciate it if you would remove that from my history. I’m proud of the condition of the books I send and that I send them quickly.
Thanks for you help.
February 9, 2008 at 5:14 pm
John ,Don’t know if I’m at the right spot for this comment but here goes.
I belong to more then 1 book trading site and I had a problem this week and I would like to explain. Went to a library book sale and bought a batch of books which I posted on both site well I’m a mystery fan and some of the books I posted aren’t mysteries so I didn’t know how popular they were now I’m getting request from both sites and normally when I get a request I remove the book from the other but this time before I could remove it from book mooch it was requested.So I had to reject .I don’t like having to do this but some times books will move better on 1 site then the other and visa versa
February 19, 2008 at 5:30 pm
Comment. I live in France now but probably it makes no difference. The Post Office seems to make up it’s own rules as to how much books cost to post. Can anyone beat the cost of sending to Israel that I was charged last week, 16 Euro’s and the book didn’t cost that new. In fact I looked at the PO list of mailing and it should have been 4.20 Euros, too late by that time.I have complained of course and next time I will be prepared when I go to mail anything.