 
| BookMooch is a community for exchanging used books. BookMooch lets you give away books you no longer need in exchange for books you really want.
- Give & receive: Every time you give someone a book, you earn a point and can get any book you want from anyone else at BookMooch.
- Once you've read a book, you can keep it forever or put it back into BookMooch for someone else, as you wish.
- No cost: there is no cost to join or use this web site: your only cost is mailing your books to others.
- Points for entering books: you receive a tenth-of-a-point for every book you type into our system, and one point each time you
- give a book away. In order to keep receiving books, you need to give away at least one book for every three you receive.
- Help charities: you can also give your points to charities we work with, such as children's hospitals (so a sick kid can get a free books
delivered to their bed), Library fund, African literacy, or to us to thank us for running this web site <grin>.
- World wide: You can request books from other countries, in other languages. You receive 3 points when you send a book out of your
- country, to help compensate you for the greater mailing cost, but it only costs the moocher 2 points to get the book. John Buckman,
- who runs BookMooch, has lived in California, England, France and Germany, and was frustrated by the vast number of books that were
- printed in just one country and not available in the other countries (for example, many books are published in Britain and never made
- available in America).
- Wishlist: you can keep a "book wish list" that will automatically arrive to you when you have the points and/or the book becomes
- available in our catalog.
- Feedback score: each time you receive a book, you can leave feedback with the sender, just like how eBay does it. If you keep your
- feedback score up, people are most likely to help you out when you ask for a book.
- How we pay our bills: We tap into Amazon's book database, and if you follow an Amazon link from our web site, we receive a commission
- from Amazon if you buy that book instead of getting it free from BookMooch.
- Why "Mooch"?: dictionary.co.uk defines "mooch" as: "to obtain something without paying for it, or to borrow something without intending
- to return it" as in "You're old enough to get a job and stop mooching off your family." And so, the word fits this project: BookMooch is a way
- to get books without paying, and without any intention of returning the book. This is the American definition of "mooch" and one of two British
- definitions. The other British definition is "to walk or act slowly and without much purpose" as in "Stop mooching about in your room and
- do something useful!" which isn't an entirely appropriate definition for this web site, but it is funny so we'll just live with it.
- Why create this?: if you're passionate about books, you know how emotionally difficult it is to throw a book away, even if you will never read
- it again. You want to find a good home for your books, have them find someone who appreciates them. Also, you may be interested in trying
- a lot of books out, and keep the ones that are great. It's a great crime to have a book disappear, out of print, for none to read. BookMooch
- keeps books in circulation, and finds new readers for them. If you're not interested in getting free books, you can donate to charities, the
- points you gain by giving your books away.
- Who are we? BookMooch is conceived, designed, written and administered by John Buckman.
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