BookMooch Blog

You can now mooch a box of 500 BookMooch bookmarks from me. I will send them out in January. Please, only mooch a full box of 500 if you need that many bookmarks or you plan on offering smaller quantities of the bookmarks for mooching by others.

In the past 2 years, I’ve printed 500,000 small mooch cards and sent them out to fellow moochers. Mostly, I sent boxes of 1000 cards each, and then members could offer smaller quantities of the cards for others to mooch. The last time I sent boxes out, I asked for volunteers to help send them out, which was a terrific help.

The idea behind the mooch cards is that you can put a few in your wallet or purse, and when someone you’re talking to is interested in BookMooch, you can give them the card as a memento, so that they remember to check out the site and become a moocher. They’re also a useful handout when you’re running a BookMooch stand at a book fair.

I’ve asked my printing company if they could print bookmark-sized cards for me at a similar price, and they’re up for it. So, soon I will be doing a large order of bookmarks and sending out boxes of 500 cards each (for free) to whoever asks for them. You can use the bookmarks just as you used the mooch cards, but also you can use them in your books as you read them as just plain old bookmarks.

I asked my graphic designer Claudy to make a vertical layout of the mooch aliens, and that’s what you can see on the right of this blog post.

Once I’ve sent out a hundred boxes of 500 cards each, I’d appreciate it if people offered smaller quantities of the cards in their inventories, so that others could mooch just the quantity they need (just as people do with the moochcards).

And speaking of the mooch cards, I’m also ordering a fresh batch of cards, so feel free to mooch a box of 1000 cards from me if you prefer them to bookmarks.

For moochers outside of American: sorry! The printer who was offering me a great price in the UK suffered an accident and has gone out of business, so I have to go searching for someone else who will print these things at near-American prices (the UK printing prices are unfortunately about 3x higher).

---

UPDATE: HELP ME FIND A GOOD PRINTING PRICE

Several people asked about my printing prices, and have also asked about getting these cards and bookmarks in Europe.

Basically, if I can get good printing prices in the UK, I’m happy to order a bunch and send boxes around the UK. I’ll have to check on how expensive postal mailing these boxes is from the UK to Europe: it may be doable.

If you’d like to see the bookmarks or cards widely available in the UK, please try to find comparable pricing to what I’m paying in the USA. I had a printer lined up in the UK, but he was a small company, suffered an injury and shut down his business (sigh).

I am currently paying:

$1008 for 35,000 cards, that are 2″x3.5″ (inches) in size, color on both sides, laminated on both sides. That comes out to $0.0288 per card.

$3698 for 100,000 bookmarks, that are 2″x7″ (inches) in size, color on both sides, laminated on both sides. That is $0.03698 per bookmark.

In the UK, I was told that laminating was a very, very expensive option, so I’m willing to live without that.

You are welcome to get the bookmarks or cards printed on your own, in your own country. I have posted the adobe-illustrator source files to both the cards and bookmarks at http://bookmooch.com/about/publicize.

A few weeks ago, BookMooch had a booth at the Baltimore Book Festival.

Or rather, BookMooch member Joshua Berlow was at the Baltimore festival, telling all the attendees about the joys of mooching. Thanks Joshua!

Send him a smooch to thank him, I did!

-john

I recently returned from 10 days in Sweden, speaking at two conferences.

The first conference was the Nordic Cultural Commons Conference organized by open-law wunderkind Herrko Hietanen. I got to reconnect with the always-inspiring Paul Gerhardt and his Archives for Creativity Project and pontificate leisurely with him about what “Britishness” is, while the conference organizers had us drinking champagne several hundred feet underground in Stockholm, in a former top-secret nuclear reactor lab called “R1“. Victor Stone of CC Mixter was there, and he and his wife provided the ambient audio/video to the nuclear-reactor party.

I got reconnect with both founder and also the current head of Pirate Bay, since we were on the same panel together. A few hours drinking mojitos with Rickard, the head of the Swedish Pirate Party. At the first night’s dinner, the quiet unassuming lawyer sitting opposite me turned out to be Till from the GPL Violations project! Also got to spend time with Timo from Star Wreck, who is working on his new film Iron Sky. I might get involved with Star Wreck 2, helping them fight evil in the movie business.

Stockholm is incredibly gorgeous: 11 islands, bridges & water everywhere, grand buildings. A cuisine that is clean, fresh, light and honest. Ate twice at two of my favorite Stockholm restaurants: Wedholms Fisk and Lisa Elmqvist which is inside one of the great food markets of the world: Ostermalms Saluhall.

This was one of the best conferences I’ve ever attended, perhaps not surprising as one of the other all-time-best conferences was another one in Finland: OpenMind 2006, where I met Herrko, the Star Wreck boys, Vili Lehdonvirta and Andreea Chelaru. Finland creates wonderful things.

In Stockholm I participated in a panel and gave a talk. The first panel was the much-anticipated “REVOLUTION OR REFORM – debate on pirate movement and copyright reformism. A video record of that panel is available at
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3700025533865609299.

I also gave a presentation entitled “Money for Nothing: building on the Commons for fun and profit” about Magnatune and BookMooch. The slides to my talk are downloadable, and the video is also up at:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5540725595751786822

---

Next I went to Gothenburg to the FSCONS conference, which was a joining of the Free Software Movement and the Open Culture Movement. Many interesting talks, but by far the best were those by Smári McCarthy, including a brilliant keynote he did about Crowdsourcing Democracy: : applying the lessons of open source culture to governance.

The video of my presentation: “Squeezing the evil out of the music industry” is available here:
http://giss.tv/dmmdb//player.php?ID=527

and the slides to that presentation may also be downloaded.

All the videos from the FSCONS conference may be viewed here:
http://giss.tv/dmmdb/fscons

---

Just before the Swedish conferences, I was in Frankfurt attending & speaking at the Frankfurt Book Fair, about BookMooch.

My slides from that presentation are downloadable and a video is available here:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1508516227510460766

Teresa sent me some notes and photos from the Wordstock Festival last week.

Teresa writes:

Jeff and Sara Coleman helped out at the booth both days and are fantastic folks. Even their darling daughter, Lucy, who is only five year old, was not shy at all and got in the act by handing out flyers! More than a few Moochers stopped by the booth to say hi and pick up cards to hand out. Andrice Arp, the wonderful designer who created the BookMooch artwork, was at the festival too. Her boyfriend Jesse Reklaw, who is a well-known comic (Slow Wave) and fine artist, found the BookMooch booth and let us know Andrice was expected later. They flipped over the lifesize Momma & Baby Bookworms. It was a great event and many of those who came by the booth loved the idea of BookMooch & wanted to join. As was explained a number of times, the winter is long in the Pacific Northwest, so books are well loved!

I’m *really* pleased that Andrice Arp, who did all the BookMooch illustrations, just happened to be at the festival! Here are two pictures of Andrice at the stand:

and of some of the people who helped out:

---

BookMooch will have a stand at the huuuuuge Wordstock festival in Portland, Oregon, and which runs November 8th & 9th. 55,000 people showed up last year!

This is part of the MoochStand project run by Teresa Malango. Thanks to Moocher Jeff Coleman for suggesting this.

If you’re going, come by and say hello to our booth. Or even better, help out for an hour to give others a break to enjoy the festival.

Last week, I put a survey link on the BookMooch member menu. I’ve taken it off BookMooch now, since it ran for a week.

My thanks go out to professor Karl Fast for making this happen, and to his students, who are doing all the work. This information is really helpful to me in understanding what people do and don’t like about BookMooch, and where I should focus in the future.

Here are some preliminary numbers:

– More than 3100 people completed surveys
– More than 1550 people volunteered for followup research (obviously we can only talk with a fraction of these people)
– We got completed surveys from more than 50 countries, including Egypt, Finland, New Zealand, Jamaica, Iran, Malaysia, Peru, Sweden, and South Africa.
– The 3 open-ended comment questions at the end of the survey generated more than 185 printed pages of feedback.

Some interesting figures:
– 35% say they read 6 books or more books per month and a further 42% say they read 3-5 books per month
– 37% say they acquire 6 or more books per month and a further 34% say they acquire 3-5 books per month
– 61% say they often acquire books from BookMooch
– 49% say they often swap their books on BookMooch when they are finished with them
– Over 90% say they rarely or almost never have bad book trading experiences
– 75% say they use BookMooch because it feels good when they give books to other people
– 87% say they will keep using BookMooch even when they have given away most of their bookshelf
– 38% login to BookMooch every day, and an additional 41% login several times per week
– 74% do not use other book trading web sites

---

Karl the professor, wrote me this, explaining the process he’s going through on his overall usability study of BookMooch:

The survey has continued to move along nicely. We have over 2800 responses so far. The 3 open-ended comment questions at the end have generated more than 150 pages, most of it positive. Over 1400 people have volunteered to help us with additional research. The team is moving ahead with the next phase. There are 2 main elements to this. First, we will be interviewing 6-8 people (via skype) who have expressed interest in discussing books on BookMooch (the “talk about books” segment). The team is working on the interview schedule. We will be scheduling these interviews shortly. Second, we will be conducting a diary study with people who cycle through a lot of books (the “out the with old, in with the new” segment). The diary study will involve a short survey (5-10 minutes) that is sent to these people twice a week for 3 weeks. It asks questions about sending books, receiving books, adding books to give away, and searching for books to acquire. It’s the same survey each time, so you get information about their usage over time. We have identified about 20 possible candidates for this from the survey. The diary study is being refined at present. We will be starting both of these in the next week. We aim to have them finished before Thanksgiving. We will also be doing a more detailed exploration of the survey. The class ends in early December. We will present our findings to Johnthen. Not sure about the exact date and how we will do this. But we will definitely be writing a report with our findings and recommendations. We may also try to schedule a group skype call with John so you can talk with the team. So far, this seems to be a roaring success. The survey has given us terrific data. BookMooch users seem to thrilled to provide structured feedback to help the site grow. And my students have been learning a lot. They’re having fun and enjoy the opportunity to work on a real project.

Here is a very, very small sampling of the 185 printed-pages of feedback:

The people are so friendly! Plus there’s nothing like the buzz of getting a book in the mail. it’s just lovely! Nice to feel that your books travel around the world! I love the combination of LibraryThing and bookmooch. LT gives me ideas for new books to read and BM sends them to me! It’s become a lovely part of my life. My husband laughs at the parcels arriving and my 4 year old asks me “did you mooch that book Mum?” Being able to complete series of books (a couple with over 25 books) for which I only have parts purchased from thrift stores. Used book stores just don’t have the selection and many of them are out of print. The net cost per book is extermely low. discovering new books, and being able to get them, even when i am low on cash. It’s a great way of making sure that your old, unwanted, books go to a home that wants them It keeps snail mail alive. The concept of sharing books you love with people who will love them too Looking forward to checking the mail. Getting books I wouldn’t usually read Completing sets from good authors It’s all good fun! …

You can now view my presentation at the Frankfurt Book Fair.

In this presentation, I estimate the size and scope of the book-swap “space”, and explain it in terms that book publishers might find relevant.

A video of my presentation is now available. If you have quicktime on your computer, click here to see a high quality version:
http://bookmooch.com/images/frankfurt.mov

Otherwise, you can watch the video at google video here:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1508516227510460766

My apologies for the video being taller than wider, I mistaken forgot to tilt my iPhone 90 degrees before recording my talk.

All this week I’m at the Frankfurt Book Fair, which is the main trade show of the book industry.

I’m giving a presentation on saturday entitled Book Swapping Web Sites: Not The Apocalypse. I came up with the catchy title because I’ve found many people in the book industry recoil when I explain that I run an online book swap, and I’m hoping to build some bridges while I’m here.

Here is a fuller description of my presentation:

Companies enabling book swapping are growing quickly, on the strength of the social relationship of book reading and recommending, the cost-savings, and offering a more “green” approach to book reading. This phenomena appears massively destructive: why would a consumer click “buy it now” on Amazon when they can click “get it for free” instead? The speaker, who is the CEO of one of these book trading web sites, will present data that while book trading is quite predatory on the second hand, used book market, it appears to stimulate new book sales, as well as to create more readers, moving books and reading into a central position in their lives.

Drop me an email if you’re in Frankfurt as well and want to meet.

---

On sunday, I head to Sweden, first to give a presentation at the Nordic Cultural Commons Conference in Stockholm.

My friend Herkko Hietanen is running the conference, and I’m looking forward to meeting up with CC-Mixter honcho Victor Stone and his artist wife Cindy.

Later next week, I hop on a train to Gothenburg for the FSCONS, “first among many Free Society conferences that bridges the gap between free software and cultural freedom.”

At FSCONS, I’ll be able to see Nikolaj Hald Nielsen, who is a fantastic Danish computer programmer who works with me on Magnatune. We correspond daily, but I have only met him once previously, and only for about an hour!

---

Cameras aren’t allowed at the Frankfurt Book Fair, except at public demos, i.e. not trade show booths.

The fair was running an old Linotype machine, and I took some video of it with my iPhone. The video is not that exciting, as the Linotype kept jamming. It’s a bit hard to see, but there are things spinning all over the place (it’s a Health & Safety disaster). The Linotype is a lot more primitive that I thought it would be: all it does is let drop the type letter for the key you press, and flush that type left against the others. It’s faster (I guess) than having all the letters of the alphabet in front of you and building the sentence up by hand, but it’s not the modern wonder I thought it would be.

Back in July I blogged about the MoochStand Project, an idea my friend Teresa had to have mooch fans staff tables at book fairs around the world.

I asked Teresa to coordinate with everyone who wants to help out.

If you’re interested in helping out, check out this MoochStand Project Page.

MoochMember Caron (send her a smooch!) ran a table at the recent Santa Barbara Book & Author Festival. Here is an action photo of her table:

She had this to say:

I took with me the kit you sent (of course) and: several books that I’ve received from the site, a book that was wrapped and ready to drop in the mail, and screenshots of several pages of the Bookmooch site. (the ones that I used the most were my Member page, showing books to send, books sent, books to receive, etc. but I also had screenshots of my Inventory, Wish List, and a screen that showed the results of a search and how to “mooch” a book.) Lots of people seemed very excited to learn about the site, and I think they’ll be checking it out in the near future. Thanks for the opportunity to talk about something I truly enjoy.

A big thanks to Caron !

I noticed a few BookMooch-related YouTube videos today.

Here are some I thought were great:

He’s totally adorable.

---

Funny throughout. Starts with a hilarious segment about a high tech winery.

---

Self-promotion!

This is me doing a “lighning-presentation” at a conference in Copenhagen. The slide automatically changes every 20 seconds, and you have exactly five minutes to speak. I manage to almost injure myself by flailing about at the beginning.

Today is BookMooch’s two year anniversary! Yay!

As a birthday present to myself, I spent some frivolous time playing with the PicLens browser plugin, making it work with BookMooch. PicLens is a 3d image browsing program, mostly useful for sites like Flickr.

However, I thought it would be fun to browse books visually. This is what it looks like as you’re scrolling through the 3D book space at BookMooch:

when you click on a book, it zooms forward like so:

To make this work, install the PicLens browser plugin, and then click on the piclens icon in your browser when you’re looking at someone’s inventory.

The PicLens folks made it very easy to support their plug-in — all that it needs is a Media RSS feed, which is just like the old RSS feeds I have at BookMooch, but with small & large images indicated in the data feed.

As soon as I got this working, I realized that this would be really useful for browsing large numbers of books, such as browsing topics, browsing nearby books, or sifting through search results.

Unfortunately, that would be actual work for me, rather than the 2 hours this took, because I have to make RSS feeds for those other pages, in order for PicLens to work. I might do that in the future, maybe.

There are a bunch of Flash-based image browsers out there, and that is probably the way I’ll go in the future to bring book-cover-browsing to BookMooch. With a Flash-based approach, every web browser could look at books using a 3d visual interface, and not have to install anything.

Here is a video I made of browsing someone’s BookMooch inventory with PicLens. You’ll notice that some of the books don’t have book covers, which is a little awkward, but it works. Also, I’ve noticed that I sometimes need to reload an inventory page before the PicLens logo goes “blue” to indicate it worked (technology, sigh).

---

Reserved books irk some folk

On another topic, I’ve gotten tons of feedback from people saying they don’t want to be notified of available books that have been reserved for others. Loud and clear, gotcha! I agree, and I’ve also gotten feedback from people that don’t want to even see as available on the web site, books which are reserved for others. I agree with that too.

I will be rewriting-from-scratch how the reservations feature works, so that reserved books are literarily not in a person’s inventory, and are only visible for the person they’re reserved for. That means reserved books won’t appear in searches, RSS feeds, or email notifications. And, when a reservation expires, it’ll be added-as-normal to the inventory, so people will get wishlist notified as per normal.

However, this is going to take me a bit of time to get to, because…

---

Taking a vacation: Learning German in Berlin

Last year I had the idea that I should spend one month a year living in a foreign city. Last year, it was Stockholm.

This year… I’m renting an apartment in Berlin, and taking intensive language courses in German. When I was 18 years old (21 years ago!) I thought my future career was teaching philosophy, and for that reason lived in Berlin for 3 months, gaining a little bit of proficiency at it. I’ve always wanted to come back to Berlin (I left weeks before The Wall Fell), and it’s taken me 20 years to get around to it.

I’ll be taking a more-or-less complete break from programming for a month, to clear my brain, and see how much German I can cram into my head!

If you live in Berlin, would like to meet me, and don’t mind listening to your language being mangled, I’m looking for an activities partner with an posting at Erste Nachhilfe.