December 3rd, 2007
The natural next step is to establish some kind of credit system, whereby members get points for sending things out and then spend points requesting items from others. Yes, that’s starting to sound more like a money system than barter, but letting customers deal directly with each other eliminates the middleman of a used-record store or resale clothing shop; traders get more for what they’re giving away.
Most trade sites have to make money somehow. U-exchange is ad-supported, while many others charge members around a dollar per trade (in addition to whatever it costs to mail the item to its new owner). Goozex does that for video games; Swango does it for apparel; Peerflix does it for DVDs. Some services keep things straightforward by deeming every listed item to be equivalent in value; others (like Swango, where a Gucci bag and a Gap Pocket-T simply don’t run in the same circles) allow users to name their price in credits.
A dollar per trade is a better deal, in most cases, than dealing with a brick-and-mortar secondhand shop. But some sites — particularly those dealing in used books, like Frugal Trader, Paperback Swap, and Title Trader — go the extra mile by charging no fee at all. (Though some sell “premium memberships” which offer more benefits.)
Which brings us to BookMooch, possibly the most noble trading site alive on the Internet. There’s no fee to join BookMooch. It costs nothing to trade a book, and every book listed — from humble pocket paperback to this month’s bestselling hardcover — is treated equally. The site has no advertisements, and encourages sending books to listed schools and libraries. It was launched and is run by a man who genuinely seems to be doing it out of the goodness of his heart. (Having sold his software company Lyris Technologies in 2005, he seemingly can afford to.)
John Buckman, a Sorbonne alum, record label owner, and proponent of “Creative Commons” efforts to drag copyright law into the online era, launched BookMooch in the summer of 2006. (See Buckman, photo, right.) As of this writing, over 11,000 members are active in the U.S. alone, with others everywhere from Zambia to Nepal, and have traded close to half a million titles. Over 180,000 books are sitting there at the moment, waiting to be taken.
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