Moleskine ® - Legendary notebook - BookMooch! Give books away. Get books you want

Some books are undeservedly forgotten; none are undeservedly remembered.
As the English poet W.A. Auden stated in "The Dyer's hand", if one is passionate about books, one knows how emotionally difficult it is to throw a book away even if you won't read it again. Because books, all books, are part of ourselves, they are a cultural product, they mean something to us. If you need space on your shelves and don't want to throw your books away, why not give them to people who want to read them? You probably want to find a good home for your books, giving them to someone that you like, a friend of yours who can take care of them, appreciate them.
BookMooch is the perfect place for all that.
It' s a web Community of book lovers where anyone can give away books and get books he/she wants to read but cannot easily find. Every time you give someone a book you earn a point and can get any book you need from someone else. There is no cost to use the web site. You only have to pay for sending your books to others. But when you receive a book from someone, you shouldn't have to pay for postage.
The idea is simple: you share your books with other people who do the same with you. It's like being in a "giant bookstore of all the bookshelves in people's homes" says John Buckman founder and owner of BookMooch, "by aggregating everyone's home book collection, we should have the best selection of used books on the planet".

Born in London, raised in Paris, John Buckman now lives half the year in California at Berkeley where BookMooch is located, and the other half in England. "I often read about books that have been out for some time in the US but aren't available in the UK - he states and adds - I like to read books in French. These are almost impossible to get in the US unless I order them from Amazon". At BookMooch is easy to get books in many different languages from other Countries. And it's profitable. When you send a book out of your country, you receive 3 points to help compensate for the higher mailing cost. But it only costs the moocher 2 points to get the book. For every book one types into the system, one receives a tenth-of-a-point, and one point each time one gives a book away. In order to keep receiving books, one needs to give away at least one book for every three one receives. If each time one receives a book, he leaves a feedback with the sender, one becomes more trustworthy within the community.
It's even possible to keep a wish-list of the books one looks for. The list will automatically arrive to the mooocher when he has got enough points and the book is available in the catalogue.
Instead of using the points for having books, one can help charities by giving his points to those charities linked to the community, such as children's hospitals, Library fund, African literacy.
The system is so successful that it has improved the sale of new books. For every 25 books mooched, one is sold at Amazon. Indeed BookMooch tap into Amazon's book database. There is an Amazon link on every page of BookMooch and if one follows just one of these links, buying a book instead of getting it free, BookMooch receives a commission from Amazon.
With more than 500.000 members all over the world, BookMooch is no longer only a web site. It's a blog too, and it's full of posts supporting ecological, sustainable alternatives to stop rainforest destruction. As a matter of fact now BookMooch is partnering with Eco-Libris, the web site that enables people to do something reasonable for the environment, making the reading much more sustainable than it is today. That's why a new project has been born: Green Mooching. For every 10 books one balances out, one will receive a free BookMooch point that can be used to mooch a book online for free. But most of all, for each book one wants to balance out with EcoLibris, a tree will be planted.
The more books you read with Ecolibris and BookMooch, the more trees you can plant!