BookMooch
 Since we wrote about BookMooch in late 2006, the site's membership has doubled, and the number of mooched books has more than tripled. Founder John Buckman has clearly encouraged a worldwide community of book lovers and library fans to share their favorite reads. When we checked in with John, he told us about his attachment to books, the personal notes he gets with his mooched novels, and how sharing helps the global community get along just a little bit better.
Hey John, how did you get the inspiration for BookMooch? I was on vacation and visiting a small town community center for a concert, and the entire entry area of the community center was filled with book shelves. There was a sign that said "leave a book, take a book" and people were browsing the collection, others were bringing boxes of books in, and still others were talking about books, recommending them to others. I loved the fun, friendly feeling that existed in that space, and I asked myself "could I recreate this feeling on the Internet?" When I went searching for book swaps, I did find other sites, but none that captured the camaraderie, friendship and, most of all, the love of books that this community center did. There was one other inspiration behind BookMooch. In the best-selling book "The Tipping Point," the author writes extensively about a book titled "Lessons Learned from Sesame Street," all about the process of making the first ever education TV show. I wanted to read this book, and given that it was so prominently quoted in a best-seller, was shocked that this book was essentially gone from the world. It took me 6 months of hunting, and finally I bought a copy from ABE Books. It was a library discard, headed for the trash. It's an amazing book, and that's the only copy I've ever seen of it. I've tried to buy copies for others, but it's gone. Could BookMooch be "a new life for old books" and ensure that these fruits of author's lives never be lost? It seems like it's doing just that. When did you start BookMooch? BookMooch launched in August 2006, after 9 months of 100-hour weeks of programming, which was some of the best time of my life. I was so excited by the project and its possibilities. Do you prefer sharing books to buying them? I love to buy books, but I can never make myself throw a book away. For me, BookMooch fulfilled a very real need, namely finding people who really wanted to read the books I'd loved over years, but that I wasn't going to re-read. I would take boxes of books with me to campgrounds and leave them in the shared reading room, try to give them to libraries (who didn't want them) and when I found out that the books given to the local hospital were sent to the trash dump if they weren't sold, my heart broke. How could you do that to books! You've mentioned in your blog that you get personal notes with the books you've mooched. We know it's probably hard to pick just one, but what note stands out the most for you? I have so many favorites, so I'll pick one recent one. A mom from L.A. told me that her 12-year-old daughter got interested in reading recently, and has read 20 books in the past 4 weeks. The daughter loves getting books from other kids and then passing them on. Wow: someone young got the "reading bug," and I helped! Another one that really stands out to me was the thank you note from a woman in Iran, who had mooched a book from me. She was so happy because there was no way to get these kinds of books in her country. She very kindly sent me a photo book of her country as thanks. She had a blog with photos of her with her friends, and it was so shocking to me to see them, they were so Western looking, they could have been French. It really shook my pre-conceptions about that country. What's been the most gratifying thing about being associated with BookMooch? The worldwide, inter-country exchange of books. BookMooch, the web site, runs in 6 languages, and people in 91 countries participate. I'm mooching German children's books in an effort to learn German, and my wife is reading Asterix: the English and French copies side by side to help her learn. There is so much misunderstanding in the world, if books can help people forge links, make friendships, understand and appreciate other cultures, I think this could help everyone get along a bit better. There was this wonderful warm feeling around the books at the real-life community center that provided the inspiration to BookMooch, and a little bit of that gets recreated on a global basis with BookMooch. Besides the fact that you already have over 32,000 members in less than a year, is there anything that's surprised you as a result of running the site? I didn't expect so many people to be interested in the charity aspect of BookMooch. If you give away more books than you request, you build up points and can give them to charities, such as to public libraries in poor areas. It turns out lots of people are happy to give away their books, give their points to charity, and just buy the books they want. Heck, Amazon was shocked to see that $30,000 in books get sold every month on Amazon due to BookMooch. Have you read books online, and do you think you could ever get comfortable with digital books? I used to a read a lot of books on my Palm Clie, and read all the Alexander Dumas books as well as "The Da Vinci Code" as a paid eBook. I was disappointed that my iPhone didn't have a PDF viewer. I've started working with the Open Library to familiarize people with the great public-domain books that are available on the Internet. Brewster Kahle, who runs that project, along with the Internet Archive, tells me that if he had $30 million, he could make the entire US Library of Congress public domain archive available on the Internet. I'm trying to figure out to help him. What are some of your daily reads online? Ars Technica and the Wired newsfeed, but that's about all I read. I'm not political and try to not learn about current affairs because it's depressing. I want to save my energy for my own projects and the great books of the world, like…the new Artemis Fowl book I'm currently reading. Do you work on anything besides BookMooch? I also run Magnatune, which is a music web site where people can listen to entire albums for free, to see if they like them, and if they choose to buy a downloadable album, half the money goes to the artist. Indie film makers and webmasters also license music from Magnatune for their own projects. It's fun, and it helps unusual music, like classical and world music, have a chance at getting heard and appreciated. Thanks for talking with us, John!
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