Review of Bookmooch.com - Give Books Away, Get the Books You Want

Our family loves reading books! Well everyone except my husband to be exact. When I was a child I could go to the library and take out 20 books at a time and still wish I could check out even more! I still do this & so my kids!

My husband will only read a book when he travels for business which is not very often. He hates going to the library with the children and I. He isn't happy when we each go to the check out counter with heavy basket full of book. He is the one who must carry them all into the house and complains all the way!

My children get sad when they have to return the books. They hug the book and give it long look before they hand it over to me.

Another problem in our house is all the books that we have enjoyed and just can't bear to part with. They would pile up in our basement, take up space on our books shelves or just well lost. Plus what do we do with books we just don't read anymore?? They end up in the basement.

We finally found a solution! We get rid of our old books and get new books! How?? We've been trading books with other book lovers online. We are members of two different sites: Book mooch & Paperback Swap. Almost every day our mail man will bring us packages of books. The kids get so excited that it is like Christmas.

This will be two part review so please make sure you read both articles.

Bookmooch - Give books away. Get books you want. http://www.bookmooch.com

Bookmooch was started by a man named John Buckman. He too is a book lover. He like most of us he had books on his book shelf that he just read once and never read again. He wanted to be able trade books. He had tried used bookstores but could rarely find the books he wanted. So he came up with the idea of Bookmooch.com

How it works: The way Bookmoch works is pretty simple. It is free to join and once you join you can add the books you want to give away. People request a book from you by sending you a point and you in return use that point to request a book from someone else.

Adding books: You add books by typing in the ISBN number found on the back of most books. This will search Amazon.com for the title and the info of the book. After the search it will come up with books that match yours then you just add it to your inventory. There is a place to add more details about the books you post by entering in info about the condition of the book plus review the book. Once added to the Bookmooch system members of the site will be able to see your book and request it from you it they want the book.

Points - Bookmooch works on a points system. After you enter in 10 books you are willing to trade you then get 1 point. With your point you can then in turn request a book from someone else. Just enter in the title of the book you want or browse the large library of books that others are giving away.

Sending books: When someone requests a book from you you'll get an email about the request. You get a point right away so you can get a book from someone! You then can either accept the request or deny it. If you accept it you then agree to mail the book. You will see the address to where you mail it on your pending page.

If you changed your mind about wanting to give away the book, can't find it or have already given it away then you can deny the request. You will have to enter in a reason for the deny and others will see this in your history.

Shipping: You mean I pay the shipping??? Yes, you pay for the shipping of the book. But the great thing is you now have a point to pick out a book yourself and the person you request from will mail the book to you.

Shipping the book is pretty simple. I use the envelopes people have sent to me. So I simply reuse envelopes which is nice! I also make sure the envelopes are taped up well because envelopes can rip, they can become unsealed and well things happen during shipping.

I use Paypal to pay for the postage of my books. Due to health issues this works for me. I pay online and print out the postage, tape it to the envelope and pop it in my mailbox. Others make a trip to the post office. You will find out what works best for you and your life.

Once you mail the book you get back online and mark the book sent. This ofcourse, let's the other person know you have mailed the book to them. Then you wait for them to get it. After they get the book in the mail they get online and mark the book received. They also leave you feed back which works very similar to Ebay's feed back. The person marks it either positive or negative. The feedback score let's other see if you are a good person to mooch books from or not. So it is important to have a good feedback score. Don't worry about having a low feedback when you first join. We all are newbies on the site at one time or another. I make a point of mooching from new people to help them get their feedback up.

Wish list & Save for later list: There is also a wish list. You can easily import your Amazon.com wish list into Bookmooch and see if any books are available. If there is a book you want and don't see it on Bookmooch you can just add it to your wishlist. If someone posts it later you will get an email letting you know so you can ask for it.

There is also a Save for later list. If you are browsing Bookmooch but don't have any points you can easily add it to your save for later list.

Over all thoughts: I've enjoyed being a member of Bookmooch. I've made a good bit of new friends & it is nice to see people who have asked for books from me in the past before return for more. As a homeschooling mom I've met a lot of other homeschooling parents on there and we will trade books.

Cons: The site can be slow at times but the creator of the site has been doing upgrades to speed things up. I do not like how when I remove a book that I lose a 1/10 of a point. But I can easily get that back by posting a book.

I recommend the site to all my friends who loves who love to read and I've even found books for family members. My father was so shocked to get a very nice golf book in the mail. The person was kind enough to mail it directly to my father with a note that it was from me.

Trading books has been such a blessing for us as a homeschooling family. Money can be tight and it is hard having to pay for our school books. The past few years we like other homeschooling families spend a lot of money to teach our kids. But this year I just got online to the paper back trading site and our homeschool library is now FULL of wonderful books my kids can love and enjoy! The only thing it's cost me is just a few bucks to ship a book to someone else.

We've also met very kind people who when they learn we are a homeschooling family will add books for my kids to enjoy. We'll get a note in the package saying, "Here's a few extra books for your kids." One lady sent stickers to the children.

If you love books this is a must join site!!! Have fun!