Swap Books on BookMooch

A friend and compatriot mom on the summer baseball league bleachers told me about a book swap web site where she and her sons found their summer reading list books for the price of shipping. It's called BookMooch.

I've seen sites for trading video games and DVDs, but BookMooch is all about trading books you don't want anymore for ones you want to read.

John Buckman, BookMooch's founder, writes on his blog that he came up with the idea for the web site while at a local community center in Norwich, UK, which had a "leave a book, take a book" area with bookshelves and couches. The shelves were filled and people were chatting about the books, asking for advice, flirting as well as reading. It was a healthy and natural thing. Reading books can be a very social act, but someone has to provide the meeting place, he writes.

Immediately he thought, this can be done on the Internet, and BookMooch was born.

Here's how it works: You sign up for free with your email address. For every book you give away you receive a point that allows you to "mooch" a book from another member. No money changes hands, but you need to pay the shipping for the books you send to other members. You also receive one-tenth of a point for every book you type into the system as available, and you need to give away at least one book for every five you receive to keep receiving books.

I like that if you store up lots of points you can give some of the points to charities BookMooch supports, including children's hospitals, so books can be delivered to kids and other people whose day would be enriched by a book.

That's pretty much it, but for more info, check out this BookMooch overview page. Then take a look at your book shelves and cull which books you could easily part with in return for some fresh reading material.