There were a few blog comments recently along these lines:

I was under the impression that we were soon going to do something to remedy BookMooch's woefully small catalogue of books available for mooching...

And I wanted to respond.

Generally, I think the problem here is not an inventory one (there are a half million books available for mooching!) but rather one of expectations.

The reality of BookMooch is that people tend to give away books that are not-very-in-demand (ie books that they didn't like, or that were popular a few years ago) and so there will never be a huge supply of "high quality books" because that's not what people give away (by "high quality books" I mean books that are currently popular and sell well in stores at the moment). There will always be griping that people can't get books on their wishlist, that's just how it will be.

The current best way to find something to read is to look at your personal recommendations. It is refreshed frequently and fairly good at suggesting moochable books you might like reading. Click "recommendations" on the browse page. I find the recommendations to be quite good, as BM suggests a number of books I have read and enjoyed that BM didn't know I had read, so the matchup with my tastes is relatively accurate.

With a half million books available for mooching, there are plenty of books available if you're willing to explore and try books out based on availability on BM, rather than whatever outside method you came to want a book and put it on your wishlist.

So, to that end, my focus will be on making it easier to find books you might want in the existing catalog. Three things are on my todo list, but all are major projects and a lot of work:

1) cover images for most books, and a visual browser of books by covers with jumping from recommendations and similar books.

2) replacing the amazon book topics with much better data, probably from librarything, so that topic browsing becomes more helpful.

3) a completely new search engine

As to enlarging the available inventory, I do have one radical idea for that, but quite a few people are going to hate it, so I'm not sure I wanted to bring it up.... but I will in another blog entry.

While you are here, John, anyway you can talk to us about all the suggestions/proposals you mentioned in your big changes blogposts, and we haven't heard anything about since? (some of the stuff in "Followup to points discussion", for example, which some of us have commented on recently)

I read all the comments, but I really don't have time to personally engage on the forums and respond to everything.

There are 30,000 active moochers, and just one of me. For about two weeks I participated heavily on the forums, and I did absolutely no work for those two weeks. I know people were very happy to see me active on the forums, but I'm not joking when I say I got no work done at all when I was active on the forums.

Programming is slow and hard work, and it's just too time consuming to answer everything on the forums and also get programming work done.

-john

That would be good. I'm using aNobii "reblog" feature to add covers to the books in my inventory... maybe that way lays a shortcut to implement the feature here?

Looking forward to hear your radical (sometimes you scary me :P) ideas for books availability on BM. I'm quite happy with it right now, but I'm a particular case because I usually look for old books nobody wants anymore :D

Perhaps we should all be more actively recommending books to other Bookmoochers.

I regret the passing of the reservation for friends option, as I used to use that to recommend a book to all my friends' list and that book would be guaranteed to be mooched within minutes.
Now I have to individually write in the ids of each friend. It does make me target books more specifically, so I don't annoy the odd person on my friends' list who is not interested in seeing my recommendations, but with 100+ friends I can't include all nor know the individual tastes of each.
I always write a book review if I intend to send a reservation, and apart from journals only reserve books I have had listed for a while, or newly listed ones for people who already have them wishlisted - whether friends or not.

Perhaps a recommend button that did not also reserve a book would help, as the complaints about reservations for friends was one reason for its removal.

I would heartily applaud the bettering of the topics - Amazon's are pretty hopeless.
I'd suggest the ability to search by language of text (rather than where the book is) would be a start and perhaps one of the easier sort parameters - please don't forget Welsh/Cymraeg if you do this, as searching for key words in Welsh is not easy, most key words are so short they exist as part of longer words in other languages.

Language sorting is long overdue, you told me it was on your 'to do' list in 2008! ;-)

yes to get a mooch acct you go buy second hand books if needed or list 10 of your books you have had lieing around.
but once you get a mooch book you read and than put on mooch again.

I use a 'book for book' swapping site and I have an inventory there of nearly 100 books... The reason that I don't list them here is that I'm pretty sure most of them would be mooched immediately, costing me a lot and leaving me with so many points that I probably wouldn't need to list anything ever again! Also it's handy for me to have a bigger list on the other site because it gives me a better chance of getting a swap accepted when I'm looking for a particular book.

On Bookmooch I like having a handful of points so I can mooch occasonally but I now have so many books to read, I don't have an incentive to start being an active member here.

The reality of BookMooch is that people tend to give away books that are not-very-in-demand (ie books that they didn't like, or that were popular a few years ago) and so there will never be a huge supply of "high quality books" because that's not what people give away (by "high quality books" I mean books that are currently popular and sell well in stores at the moment). There will always be griping that people can't get books on their wishlist, that's just how it will be."

So, in other words (and after previously suggesting otherwise) John has decided to do nothing whatsover to improve the site (except a couple of meaningless cosmetic changes). If Paperbackswap can maintain a quality inventory of books, why is it such an impossible task for this site?

And, yes, I think the gripers don't quite grasp that this site is not Barnes/Noble, Alibris, QPBC or other book STORES where one puts items from a wishlist into a cart. There is NOT an unending supply of a specific book. And for these people, maybe I should update one of my grandmother's favorite saying--if wishes were books, beggers would be reading....instead of griping!

PBS maintains nothing.
People using one site or the other do. Especially people using both sites in a certain way.

If you have a bunch of people who collectively post only unpostable-by-PBS or unmovable-on-PBS inventory, some staying here with empty inventories and just a few points for the purpose of funelling any "good" stuff they can snatch into a rival system, what do you think the result is going to look like ?

Ouroboros logic for the win.

I've been picking up books at my local library's used corner that are popular wish list items and posting them here. They get mooched pretty fast and hopefully the moochers will post them back when done reading. :-)

But again - thanks for all you do! I freelance as well as manage my own fan web page of a TV Show (Northern Exposure), and many other hats... I know how much time is worth!

Actually, it's as simple as this: With Paperbackswap, you send out one book and you get a credit to be spent on one book. None of this "send out 1, get 2 back" mentality. With PBS, points are hard to come by, and this forces people to maintain large inventories if they want a lot of books. As a result, there a ton of books over there (currently over 5,016,798 books and more than 667,025 unique titles available). Their book selection puts this site to shame.

Unfortunately, I sent out a bunch of books on this site with the assumption that I would actually be able to use my points. The problem is that (like many others), I can't find many worthwhile books on this site. Therefore, it doesn't make much sense to keeping posting books. I think I'll just let my inventory run down to nothing (like so many others have done). Eventually, I'll use up my points (it may take a couple of years).

I predict that this site will be dead within three years- without major changes it will never be able to sustain itself. Meanwhile, PaperBackSwap will continue to thrive.

@Frank John has decided to do nothing whatsover to improve the site (except a couple of meaningless cosmetic changes) I don't see how anyone would call completely revamping the topics and creating a new search engine as "cosmetic" changes. These are changes that have been requested over and over in forum discussions and John is responding to those requests in a major way.

Perhaps a recommend button that did not also reserve a book would help, Ooh, I like the idea of adding an option to use the current recommend button with "my friends". I would like to be able to send a "recommendation" message to all my friends to let them know I am posting a bunch of books.

John, By all means, let's hear it. If it will improve the inventory and does not involve charging people to use the site, then I'm all for it.

I love the site, and I enjoy sending books as much as I enjoy receiving them. BookMooch is not my only avenue for obtaining my books, but it is certainly the most feel-good one. Thanks for all you do :)

(I find the search is currently next to useful unless you have a specific author / title in mind - getting better subject data than the dreck Amazon assigns would be a huge help, and I'm really glad to hear that's on your agenda for improvement.)

Quick thought re the reccomended books, which you describe a "good at suggesting moochable books" - my experience is that it's pretty good at finding things I might be interested in that then turn out to be either not available to mooch to my country, or currently reserved for someone else (or which are available, but overseas, and I'm less likely to gamble 3 points than 1 on a random read.)

Is there any chance you could apply the same availability filters to the recommendations as you do to wishlist notifications, so only things that *can actually be mooched from the country I'm in* show up?

And/or add a 'show me recommendations available within my country' check box to the recommendations?

As always, thank you for all the work that you put into the site!

@Frank. Paperbackswap is U.S.A. only. Bookmooch is the best and often only option for many of us. It is a wonderful international community of book lovers. It is a constantly changing community, run by volunteers, the chief of which is John, who are always trying to improve the site. Some of the changes they implement make it better for most of us, some of the changes make it worse for some of us. It is a work in progress. As to improving the inventory of books available: I have noticed that you do not participate in any of the other forum discussions so perhaps miss out on many opportunities available to find out about inventory deals, books that are being posted or searched for, making friends who will look out for books you want and other ways that make Bookmooch a very successful experience for many of us. The only suggestions I have seen you make for improving Bookmooch have been to remove the 0.1 point incentive for adding books, which would be a disincentive for newbies who are one of the best sources of new inventory, and people removing "stale" books from their inventory, which would accomplish nothing, IMHO. There isn't a limit to the number of books that can be in the Bookmooch inventory. It doesn't hurt anything for some older books to be sitting in inventories for a year or more waiting to be found. It's not like a small used bookstore with old inventory taking up valuable real estate. Eventually someone will join Bookmooch for whom one of those "stale" books will be the title they have been looking for for years. You have suggested that people remove these "bad" books and replace them with "better" books. I have yet to hear a good definition of "better" books. Perhaps books that you have on your wishlist? Please not just newer books or highly wishlisted books. Many of the books I am looking for are older, obscure and wishlisted by very few.

You keep asking that John do *something* to improve the inventory in Bookmooch and until he does you will not be posting anymore books. If everyone had this attitude Bookmooch will indeed, as you predict, die out. Luckily, many of us continue to post books, even though we don't need the points, to keep Bookmooch thriving because it matters to us and we care about it's continued health.

The problem with this is twofold.

One, it makes it difficult for people to gauge how in demand a book is. There are books with hundreds of copies in the system that are supposedly wishlisted. If you have a book you want to post, it's a pain to have to check the status of the 5 people wishing it to figure out the odds they'll actually mooch it.

Two, it means these inactive members are getting wishlist emails. One of the BIGGEST complaints I hear about the current wishlist system is that by the time people get the email notification, the book has already been mooched. I believe that a huge factor is the many hours/days that are wasted on popular books sending email notifications to (grossly) inactive members. Cut them out of the loop and get the emails to active members who will actually mooch the book.

And yes I found a lot to put on bookmooch so back to over 100 points and the potential for another year or two reading. Now I can do all this because of the wish list storing the books I've come across in these ways:

1 looking up books I've like on Librarything.com to see what else this might lead too and then listing them

2 checking the wish-list of trusted moochers to find nuggets to list

3. working on the assumption that happy to read what's hot 3-4 years behind the trend.

4.alternating fiction with non fiction so always open to a new trend

5 watching and listening any book review programme or reading what books I like features and then listing any that catch my fancy - did that for world book day and discovered ones I liked. Listed on a Monday and got a mooch the following day that zillions wanted!

But funny enough never used or made much sense of the bookmooch recommendations. So my line would be widen your taste, lower your must have the in book expectations and the world will be fine

The .1 point for adding a book should should be discontinued. It's only real purpose is to make it possible for people to get more books than they give (and that's what's killing this site). As for it being a "disincentive" for newbies, it certainly hasn't stopped PaberBackSwap from getting new members.

As for my other suggestion, that was actually one of John's better ideas. He had toyed with the idea taking back the tenth of a point for books that sit on the site for two years. He then talked himself out of it, no doubt because he didn't want to upset anyone. These books (the ones that have went years without being mooched) are left in inventories for the sole purpose of getting and keeping extra points, not because there's a chance of actually have them mooched. But by all means leave your books in your inventory forever. If John was to follow the other suggestion, it wouldn't be a problem.

@Frank PBS gives two start-up credits for listing ten books, so they give newbies an inventive to post books as well.

I've been here nearly three years and have never had a problem finding a book to mooch if I really wanted. If I didn't think someone in my household would strangle me, I could probably use half my points right now, and I've got 100+. For casual site users, though, finding things can be more difficult. So a big thank you to John for trying to get these changes done! Covers I can take or leave, but Amazon topics and improved general search would be pretty darn great.

I am also in agreement with RidgewayGirl. If there are any tasks that the site users can help with, I'm sure there would be a good number of volunteers.

Frank said,"Unfortunately, I sent out a bunch of books on this site with the assumption that I would actually be able to use my points. The problem is that (like many others), I can't find many worthwhile books on this site. Therefore, it doesn't make much sense to keeping posting books. I think I'll just let my inventory run down to nothing (like so many others have done). Eventually, I'll use up my points (it may take a couple of years)."
- I think you're expectation are just too high. You have only 38 points waiting there...points I could spend in a day. You're active on PBS that only open for USA...Bookmooch on the other hand is an international site that many of us (not from the USA) really love.
- If you want to contribute to BM-health, why not post books?...no you won't because of your 38 points waiting to be spend for the coming years.

I love this site, thank you John...

Well, I disagree with this assessment for a number of reasons.

You acknowledged in a post you made about a month ago that BookMooch is experiencing a problem with the size of its collective inventory:

the total catalog size in BookMooch has been shrinking for the past 2 years, and I want to fix that.

Are you saying that the problem's been fixed and that the size of our collective inventory is now growing? I don't understand what's changed between then and now.

I don't understand where you're getting this figure of half a million books. When I go to browse the books published in English, I'm told that there are only 141792, and looking at the other numbers for other languages I don't see them adding up to half a million. Paucity alone wouldn't be so bad, but BookMooch is sorely lacking in terms of diversity as well. We've got thousands of Dan Brown, Stephen King, and John Grisham novels alone. At the same time, and ironically at that, I've had an extremely difficult time finding the authors typically named when I'm complying with the security checks necessary to post on this forum: Melville, Ginsberg, Neruda, Plath, Nabokov ... it's nearly impossible to find these authors. Even if the inventory shrinkage problem has been rectified, I don't know how you can deny that the sort of inventory homogeneity I've described is a problem.

I can't speak for others, but I think my catalog expectations are reasonable. I don't expect most of the books on my wishlist to become available; I tend to list a lot of obscure books that I eventually find through other means. I spend a lot of time using the search engine to try to find books that pique my interest, so yes I am willing to explore. I don't expect to find "high quality books" as you so define them.

My concern is just that when your focus is on "making it easier to find books you might want in the existing catalog", then it's like you've given up brainstorming ways to increase or diversify the catalog.

Really?! Think again. I used to be on PBSwap, but left after a two-fold situation of a requester "warning" me if the book sent was not up to her standards she would take bak her pt and several days later receiving a book that I had requested that was LITERALLY falling apart. So, those 5 million books listed on that site don't mean squat if there are prima donna requesters and lack-of-common sense listers.

I have found Book Moochers to be much more concientious about book conditions and just being overall more pleasant in their manner. AND, John does his best to respond to major complaints that come up. Go ahead, ask me if I received a response to my letter of complaint to the PBS founder (Richard, I believe) about the member with the disintegrating book!

Couldn't have said it better myself if I stopped long enough to figure out what exactly it was in Frank's PBS/BM comments that were getting under my skin. (Yeah, I'm a bit brain-dead today. I'll let Cara keep being my spokesperson)

I'm not sure if this is the right place to bring this up, but I've had in mind to contact you about this, and decided to do it now when I'm here and really remember it instead of the usual "I'll do it later" and then forget it completely.

It's really just a little thing, but would help to make BM page easier to use for me (and probably for other people outside of the big language groups too).

This is a problem that occurs every time when I add a Finnish (or Swedish) book that is not found through an amazon/bookmooch search(any of them - I always try them all) to my inventory - that is, when I add a book by hand.

After writing the book's info and adding it to my inventory I get the message "the book is added bla-bla-bla" and everything is just fine.

But if I want to write condition notes, it gets tricky, because there's no direct link from that page to the books condition notes (like there is after adding a book that can be found through the searches). If I want to add condition notes to added-by-hand book, I have to first go to my inventory and find the recently added book there and go details page and there the condition notes...

So. Would it be possible to get that link that goes straight to condition notes to the page that confirms that you've added a book to your inventory? The link is there after adding a book that already exists on BM or Amazon, but it's not there if you add a book by hand and it is really frustrating...and it takes a lot of extra time to add the notes if you have to make lots of extra steps to do it.

The payoff was worth the time spent. I cast a huge net and while I don't get very many hits these days (I completed my wishlist several years ago) I received two emails today with books I'm still interested in mooching. Just an idea, if anyone wants to increase the number of books they can choose from.

It is impossible to compare Bookmooch with any other organization as Bookmooch has a unique purpose, the dissemination of books worldwide, there is no other focus.

Getting popular books is not easy because these books are so popular people are willing to pay for them. They are still in the retail stream and not yet available to the non-retail stream. Bookmooch is not the same as a for-profit organization which is driven by a completely different model and usually has many more staff members and resources.

It is also true that there is a more international slant to Bookmooch. Here in the U.S. I see a tendency for us to assume the 'customer-is-always-right' is the only perspective, that everyone is going to be working to make every customer happy. Not possible to do easily and especially in a not-for-profit organization.

I don't read the most popular books so I don't have any to put into my inventory. I think I would be very frustrated if I expected to find the bestsellers readily available here.

I am also constantly learning about new books I might investigate (I must say that the recommendations list is full of stuff I am completely not interested in, unfortunately).

This group has forced me to become more patient and more flexible, two traits that benefit me. I definitely find it difficult to prod myself into improving on my own!

Thanks John, thanks everyone for contributing to Bookmooch.

There are many MANY things within BookMooch that make far superior to PBS. (Yes, I am on both sites - Full disclosure). I personally like the Wish-list system on BM better than PBS. Why? Because I have a better chance of landing a popular book! Some of you think it's unthinkable. Well, I recently got 4 books I have been holding out on over at PBS FOR OVER A YEAR! So, now tell me, what site is better? Thank you BM. And no, I do not do anything more than read my notification e-mails when they come. I also have a huge Wish-list.

I like the point system in BM better. I understand why John took the .1 for giving feedback away (BTW, I still do it as a courtesy). But I really REALLY like the .1 for listing a book. Will I leave if it went away? I'll probably think about it.

Right now, I have a large TBR. But, for various reasons I also have a backlog of 50-100 really good books that can be listed and gone within 2-3 days. On BM or PBS? Why haven't I done it? Obviously, I can't afford shipping on 50 books all at one time... Otherwise it would have happened already.

BookMooch has always had more of a community feel for me, a lot more so than PBS. I have traded books with people from France, the UK, the Philippines (I donated books and magazines to a library there) and even Japan (my thoughts and prayers still with the Japanese people). Meeting all these people, even vicariously through BookMooch was exciting. In fact, there was a lady in France that helped discovered a book I really enjoyed, then I helped her find the latest book in a series she and I were both reading. She turned around and mailed this book back to me this past October. Sadly, she passed away in December....

Still, the sense of Friendship and community one develops through BM IS NOT available on PBS. In fact, a lot of my Facebook friends are BM friends as well. John, I wish BM had a bit more Facebook like features in it (the community aspects of it).

So you see why I think BM is better.

And here is a thought Frank - if all these PBS users, have all these wonderful NEW books over there, why don't you entice some of them to bring their books over here, and enrich our inventory? I occasionally do, by putting a BM bookmark in the book I send out.

Thanks and take care.

Once again John, you hot the nail on the head. I do the same thing.

But it appears not many people read as we do. Rather, they look for their particular author, and if his/her latest book is not immediately available on BM, they immediately assume the site is busted.

Strangely, I have taken the exact opposite road. I've told my family and friends to give me Bookstore or Amazon gift cards for Christmas and my Birthday. This means, my favorite author's books are always available to me when they are published. It's funny because I occasionally put them in my wish-list and then get wish-list hits, that I, of course, have to decline, because I already have the book(s).

This also means, that depending on the book(s), I have lots of newer/newish books that need to be listed after having be read.

I'd like to see the forums to be tidied-up a bit....

In the old forums, we had BOOK recommendations, and people would post about REALLY cool books they read on there. Like "Water for Elephants" when it first came out, which has been made into a movie now. ETC.

I just wanted to comment about people who are "not listing books when there are more than 5 copies available". I have listed my books when there were more than 40 copies of that same book available, and it still was mooched within a few weeks! I think if you are a reliable sender of books, with a good history, then BookMooch members would still prefer to mooch from you than someone else who did not have a good history. And, as someone else had said, the book sitting in your inventory for more than a year could be a new member's longed-for treasure.

I liked Jenny's analogy that BookMooch is like a yard sale. If you can't find the books you want, and can't wait for them to turn up on either BookMooch or Paperbackswap (as people have said, membership for PBS is open to US residents only), go to the library and borrow it, or buy it off a secondhand book site (since all BookMooch books are secondhand in some way or other), if you don't want to get it new.

And I find it odd that people are blaming John for the perceived lack of diversity of the overall BookMooch inventory. Like the gene pool in a community, to get more diversity, you need more new members - and incentives which encourage more new members should be something to be focused on. So, I would support continuing the 0.1 point for listing a book.

I'm also a picky moocher. I'm a hardcover snob, and will often ignore mooching a book in paperback (so this much-vaunted PBS site would be meaningless for me). I dislike popular books, so my save-for-later list is huge and rarely is there a book available for me to mooch. When there is, it is usually one of the ones I'm least interested in. I have often been shocked by what is not available on Bookmooch.

This all being said, I don't think it needs to change. I don't use Bookmooch as a primary source of reading. I'm OK if I end up with 100 points and nothing to spend on. It is a free site, all things being equal. I spend shipping to get a book. That's a damn good deal. It is always a marvel to me when people spend so much time griping about things that work as they're supposed to and are also free. I list 10 books. I send ten books. That's 11 books I can mooch for the cost of one new hardcover, two new paperbacks, three new mass markets... see the trend? If I find one book for every ten that I am remotely interested in, I am technically saving money. So while I may never have the largest inventory, and don't expect to have the most reliable payout of books I want to books I can get, I will always be posting books to bookmooch. One or two here, a handful there. I don't expect my benefits to be immediate. It is like a free used book store. I don't go to my local used book store and bitch that it doesn't have enough books I want. It's CRAMMED with diverse books. I don't go to my library and kvetch either. Libraries can only function as far as funding goes, and our culture doesn't believe education and information deserves funding. It is not the library's fault if it can't get new books. It is a matter of weak donations and weaker respect for the institution.

Similarly, there is one collective "person" to blame for bookmooch's perceived poor inventory: readers. If I have a copy of The Sun Also Rises that I don't want to post, and you want it, what is bookmooch going to do to make me post it? It shouldn't do anything. It's my book. But I am more to blame than bookmooch is. There are lots of reasons to wait on posting inventory. I might not want to spend $250 in one week shipping out 100 new books. I might not be done with the book. I might think it would be better to try to sell it, or to donate it. But if people are saying they are withholding books because there aren't enough books to mooch for themselves, they should realize that someone like them is part of the problem. The inventory is each of our responsibility, and therefore, it is only as good as the bookmooch users. And while they clearly don't have the same taste as I do (or perhaps they do, and are keeping what I want), I see no reason to believe they're anything but quite good.

So if there's any one thing that bookmooch can do to improve its inventory, it is continue finding ways to bring new people into bookmooch. Preferably people who understand the give and take required to maintain a site of this nature. It seems one person is the driving force behind this site. What good will it do for him to buy 100 books? Even if he got them for $5 at an estate sale or yard sale or library sale, it's still hundreds of dollars for one person to shoulder, and there's still no guarantee those books will be wanted. It needs to be a group effort, and that group needs to include numerous new bodies. That should be bookmooch's prime focus if they feel they need more books (and for a site like this, more is always better). We should be mentioning the site too, and I try to myself when it comes up in conversation, but this thread is about what bookmooch can do, right? That's the biggie: keep getting the word out. More users equal more books. More books equal more diversity. More diversity means more mooching. More mooching means more users.

That brings me to two of the other criticisms/ideas here. First: penalizing unpopular books is so ludicrously corporate. An actual bookstore has things other than James Patterson on their shelves because sometimes people want something other than James Patterson. You might only see one sale on a title, but you'd better believe the person who finds it in stock is going to stick around with that store. It's why somewhere like barnes and noble has those shelves of special orders at their stores: people want unpopular titles as much as popular ones. they just don't want them as quickly. Bookmooch can only be competitive against other trade sites, and even against itself, with the most diverse library possible.

Which leads to that .1 point for listing. It is, as others have said, not enough to make people stop listing. One still has to list ten books to get that single point, and if they send them all, they can make a single extra point. That's not exactly a nest-egg of extra points. But more importantly, it's also not enough to bankrupt the site of books. Yes, if I give 10 and take 12, that means there are negative 2 books left. But that's not how it logistically works. I would imagine that most people do not have an even given-to-gotten ratio, and I'd wager that most people have that ratio dramatically in favor of what they've given. It's a safe bet to make, since there are hundreds of thousands of books on the site. Are they unwanted books? To you now, but not to everyone forever. Tomorrow someone might come on who really wants your oldest inventoried book. Tomorrow you might be recommended a new book that someone else has had sitting around for years in their inventory. If it was removed for being dead-stock, you would have one more reason to complain about not having enough books to mooch. That's how the world works: sometimes you need to invest before you profit. And by sometimes I mean always. Bookmooch can't operate at all if people are going to see it solely as "what can I get?" and not at all think that they are also providing for others. No program can. You cannot get something for free unless someone is contributing more than they're getting back. It's like a free book tax. If that tax offends you, leave. Because it's true, people can abuse the system, but it's not the people who hypothetically are taking 12 books and only giving 10. It's the people who don't understand that to make this site work, people need to be willing to do the opposite, and give more than they get. The best way to keep that running is for people to continue doing what they can do, and for as many people as possible to be a part of the site. Bookmooch itself can't do much of anything for us directly.

I regret the passing of the reservation for friends option, as I used to use that to recommend a book to all my friends' list and that book would be guaranteed to be mooched within minutes. Now I have to individually write in the ids of each friend.

There is an undocumented feature with reserving books: you put the word "friends" in as the person to reserve the book for, and the book will be reserved for your friends.

I just now put a line in the Wiki about this feature.

The "reserve for friends" feature was taken away because lots of people used it, and a lot of people hated it. The feature is still there, but harder to find, so that it gets used less, when it's really appropriate rather than all the time.

-john

I'd suggest the ability to search by language of text (rather than where the book is) would be a start and perhaps one of the easier sort parameters - please don't forget Welsh/Cymraeg if you do this, as searching for key words in Welsh is not easy, most key words are so short they exist as part of longer words in other languages.

Yes, that's also high on my own wishlist, as ISBN country-of-origin is not an accurate way to track language. I believe better data on language of each book will come with the LibraryThing Import too.

-john

Journalling is a sustainable form of mooching, as all journals should be passed on within two weeks of receipt, and when requesting journals from abroad most journallers ask for two or three at a time, or look at books in the person's inventory too.
Helping with the journal site has also given me a glimpse into the time and effort needed to sustain a site, so llongyfarchiadau = congratulations for all your hard work!

Here's where I'm confused. I'll admit right now the books I have listed are so-called "junk books". Why do I leave them there? Because most libraries or used book stores have no interest for them and because it doesn't hurt anyone. Plus one day someone might want one of them.

Genevieve: you absolutely are doing the right thing by posting those books that seem to have no value. "A new home for old books" was one of my original slogans for BM, and the home page illustration is all about unloved books finding new love with a new reader.

And more to the point, a few months ago I blogged about some analysis of the BM book catalog, and found that almost all books are mooched within 2 years. If I remember correctly, about 50% are mooched in a year, another 30% within the next year. Sometimes, it just takes a few years for the right home for your old books to come along, but the stats showed very few books (less than 10%) staying homeless after a few years.

Ah here it is: Not much junk on BM

-john

I don't understand where you're getting this figure of half a million books. When I go to browse the books published in English, I'm told that there are only 141792, and looking at the other numbers for other languages I don't see them adding up to half a million. Paucity alone wouldn't be so bad, but BookMooch is sorely lacking in terms of diversity as well. We've got thousands of Dan Brown, Stephen King, and John Grisham novels alone.

Yes, there are "only" 140,000 distinct titles in English currently available on BM.

There are about 400,000 total books available, which can be seen on the stats page:
http://bookmooch.com/about/stats_show?chart=number_of_asins_listed

The number of books currently being mooched has remained fairly stable for the past three years at around 20,000 books:
http://bookmooch.com/about/stats_show?chart=number_of_pending_give

About 75% of books added to BM are mooched within 2 years:
Not much junk on BM

leading me to believe that there are not many "junk" books on BM.

As to "too much Dan Brown" a few months ago I did some analysis of that, and found that the top 100 most available books on BM accounted for just 4% of the total inventory, so that's just not the case.

I should point out that lots of people like Dan Brown, and while he may not be High Literature, I myself enjoyed mooching and reading Davinci Code and Angels & Demons, as well as the Harry Potter novels, as an enjoyable break from brainier material (I'm currently reading the High Lit travel classic "Two Towns in Provence" by MFK Fisher http://bookmooch.com/s/fisher+provence/-/0/ which I also mooched).

There's a reason the best-sellers have ... ahem ... sold so many copies, it's because people wanted to read them. So if there are 100 copies of Anita Shreve available for mooching http://bookmooch.com/top/available - maybe you'd enjoy her?

-john

1.3 If you remove the .1 point, then anyone who (a) doesn't have a large quick-moving inventory or (b) is outside the US, is unlikely to be able to garner points as not everyone wants to spend their points on international mooches and not everyone can send internationally. 2. Recently published books

I like the +0.1 point for listing a book. It seems to:
a) create an easy way for new users to get started
b) create an incentive for listing lots of books, of which (on average) 75% are mooched within 2 years.

Just to be clear: I don't believe that I've ever suggested taking away the 0.1 point for listing a book.

What I did suggest is that when you give away a book, that perhaps you should receive .9 points, so that the .1 + .9 = 1 point, not 1.1 points, as it exists today. Another idea was that it'd cost 1.1 points to mooch, and the giver would receive 1 point (thus balancing out the small .1 inflation for each newly listed book).

These thoughts are simply me brainstorming.

I suggest lots of ideas, but do very few of them: that's the purpose of the forum for me, to air ideas and see where they lead.

I don't currently plan on changing the way the 0.1 point gets handled. I wanted to air a lot of ideas, but do very few of them.

-john

Hallelujiah!!

John-
Compare that with five million books and nearly seven hundred thousand distinct titles on paperbackswap. The inventory on this site is woefully inadequate. You really can't see the need for improvement?

Something else that would really make it easier for me to find books to mooch: grouping by BOOK not by edition.

Examples make it easier. I might hear of an author and think 'okay, I'll mooch some of his books and see what they're like' so I come and search for, I don't know, 'John Grisham'. You're often presented with lots of listings for different editions of the same books. What I would prefer is to have each book listed with the TOTAL number of moochable copies - a general page for each book, not edition. This would simplify finding books to mooch as you would see instantly which books were available (likewise, searching by a word, you'd see one listing of each book, not a screen taken up with listings of the same book). It would also make it easier to compare which copy to mooch as all the listings would be on one page. At the moment, I have to open each edition, see who will send to my country, look at all the condition notes and eventually make a choice after flicking through loads and loads of tabs. Obviously, the edition-specific stuff needs to be maintained for people who want a specific edition, but I imagine most people just want the book and don't much care.

BM caters to a slightly different group of people. If you like the newest, shiniest bestseller automatically then go for PBS. If your tastes are more wide ranging or eclectic and you don't mind checking your wishlist everyday, then BM will suit you better. IMO, there's no point of two identical sites.

I have three shelves on a bookcase dedicated to books I really want to read, I'm really excited to read, and 75% of them have come from Bookmooch. I have a huge wishlist, hundreds of books long, and every other week or so, something awesome pops up.

Patience is key.

I just received a book that's been on my wishlist for more than 2 years. It's out of print. I'm really excited about it. I just happened to log in one day when it had just been added. This has happened a few times.

I think people with varied reading tastes, who are in it for the long haul, who give enough books that they have plenty of points to spend, etc - won't have a problem finding fantastic stuff.

It's a big circle for me, too. My husband and I are both huge readers, and he is a writer and a teacher, too. We only have so much bookshelf space. We read a lot of books and then don't have space to keep them all. Sometimes when I list a book, it gets mooched within the hour. Sometimes it takes a week. Sometimes it takes a year. But almost everything I've ever listed has eventually been mooched.

I wonder what is the basis of these inventory complaints, for a service that is essentially free and lands beautiful books in our laps.

Incidentally, I'm not a member of any of the other book-swapping sites, but when I joined BookMooch, I researched all of the available sites and decided BookMooch was the best one for me. I guess if I were a reseller, or I had some massive volume of books I were trying to move or acquire, or I had VERY specific interests, I might have reason to complain. But I am wary of making complaints on a free service anyway. (And I am a supporter, so it's not free for me, but that is my choice.)

Okay, rant over.

Thanks, John, for providing such a wonderful service.

Oh, and John? Could you add an "Oops, not sent button" for those of us who don't always have the greatest aim please?

Thanks!

I also have listed some popular and sought after books in my inventory and they get snatched up right away, which means that other people besides myself are getting good books. I listed "shit my dad says" and it was snapped up literally in under 2 minutes. As others have said, it's a bit of luck that goes along with this.

Also, I wouldn't be afraid to list books you think are undesireable. I listed a bunch of super old books I found in my grandma's basement (she gave me permission, don't worry) and after checking to make sure they weren't worth a significant amt of money, I listed them on here. I was so surprised when some of them were mooched! Totally shows that one person's trash is another's treasure. A good majority of books I list in my inventory aren't on a single wishlist and still end up getting mooched.

I'm extremely happy with this site overall. I first heard about it on the Racheal Ray show. I'm a 30 year old female (some people like that demograhical info when reading someones opinion in forums).

Thanks for this site!

2. I hate it when people continue comparing PBS to BM....For those in the US there is a choice what site to use...for many others there is NO choice. Whoever wants to read a book in a language that is not that of the country they are living in or want to read in different languages BM may be the ONLY option.
I live in Italy, have been mooching and reading English, Italian and French books... all thanks to BM.

3. I have not been adding books to my inventory and will not add for a few weeks...The reason for this is due to postage costs. I have many English books to add and due to the high increase in postage costs I cannot afford to send one book per Bmer abroad....I hope that by adding 10-20 books that whoever mooches will multimooch therefore cutting postage costs per book and give me the possibility of accepting mooches worldwide once again.

4. I have been finding lots of books from my WL...it takes patience, a big WL and the curiosity of reading different kinds of books.

Oh, mail her first to say that having sent a book you are disappointed to see that she has delayed your book and all the others requested for far too long you would like to know what she intends doing, and what exactly the length of the delay is likely to be - sometimes new moochers are overwhelmed when they first join, with far more mooches than they expected, but then one would expect at least as many books to have been sent by her as have been sent to her.

HOWEVER- since the implementation of the RSS feed and the staggered wishlist emails and the ability of everyone on the site to see a wishlist book has been posted, I get virtually nothing on my wishlist. It has taken me nearly 6 months to use 5 points. Where then (like Frank) is my incentive to list more books to mooch for others if I can't get anything that I'm looking for?

You may say that part of the fun is sending to others and I won't disagree. But- that "fun" costs me $2.50 domestic or $7.00 to the rest of the world. That's some pretty expensive "fun" with no return.

1. I check my email and or wishlist frequently for books that are on my list.
2. I do not keep books in my inventory just to have points..what is the POINT? if nobody wants them?
3. I list them if nobody bites I donate them to my local library.
4. I check others wishlists when I mooch to see if I can return the favor
5. I list books I get from bookmooch back on bookmooch especially if they are one of the most wishlisted books.

As long as the popular books are mooched here and swapped on another site, there will always be a shortage.
I'm grateful for all you have done John to make my bookmooching pleasurable :)

Don't mean to touch on something that is obviously a nerve - but that is one thing about PBS that I love. I know I can find something to spend a point on right away given they have rather powerful search features. I really appreciate the work put into this site and it seems like you are the sole person behind it. Understand that your proposed changes may take a lot of time, and perhaps introducing mechanisms for us to help may lessen your own workload.

When John posted this, did anyone look at it? Roughly, it breaks down like this:

Feb'08 approx. 420,000 books available on this site
Aug'08 approx. 550,000
Feb'09 approx. 550,000
Aug'09 approx. 550,000
Feb'10 approx. 490,000
Aug'10 approx. 420,000
Feb'11 approx. 400,000

Basically, this site peaked two or three years ago, and has been going downhill ever since. It is not thriving, and won't unless major changes are made. John has stated that about 80% of the accounts on this site are inactive- well why do you think that is? The tiny, shrinking inventory must have something to do with it. And when people have more points than they can spend, they will stop listing books. Of course, this only adds to the problem, but what else can we do?

Getting rid of the .1 point for listing books wouldn't solve the problem over night, but when members' points start to run out (might take a year) they would be forced to add more books. Eventually, this downward slide would be reversed and the problem solved.

A fair question. I joined both sites over a year ago. Paperbackswap isn't perfect (not by a long shot), but it works. As for why I'm still on this site, I put a fair amount of money into this site (before I realized how screwed up it really was) and I'm not about to walk away from 38 unused points. If I had it to do over again, I wouldn't bother. But, I suppose I'll have to stick around until I can find 38 books on this site that I actually want. Maybe just 35 if I remove my inventory.

so many inactive members' books do still appear.

and, they are still showing up when looking at how many people wishlist a book, another annoyance.

clearing the inactive members should be a big priority as far as i'm concerned.

and yes, the search! i am looking forward to this being improved immensely. i do get good recommendations from that function, but as someone has stated, many are actually unmoochable as they won't send to my country. i'd love to be able to get accurate recommendations or just browse categories that reflected the books accurately, i'd spend far more points if i could do this. i'd love to be able to get more books for my son, but it's near impossible to just browse children's books for example.

Your statistics are meaningless. It's like the people who tout polls when they ask "leading questions" to influence the poll.

Like any membership site, membership rates are going to fluctuate over time. This is not a bell curve, or a sine curve, or any such curve. It is what it is. It goes up, it goes down.

The strength of Bookmooch is the availability of books internationally. I got a book I REALLY REALLY wanted from Australia. Are you willing to spend 3 of your 38 points for a book that you really want if it comes-up in Australia. It might take a couple of months to get to you, but you will be enriched by the experience.

When I first joined, I had almost 150 books . Operation Paperback (who get books for soldiers in the army and then mails them out to them), mooched almost 35 books from me. That's an amazing experience.

The other thing that strongly correlates with the numbers you quote (which as I said are completely OUT OF CONTEXT) is the economy. The economy went into the tank in 2008, around the world. No wonder less people joined BM and growth was halted.

The other thing that's a trend today is the growth of E-Book Readers. You can not discount them, even though they seem to have peaked at 12% of market penetration... (I don't have one, but I want one).

So quoting numbers out of context, bad.

I think John B. is trying to make concrete efforts to make BookMooch relevant no matter what. He's making suggestions and opening the discussion to all. Give him a chance.

You're telling me that going from nearly 550,000 available books to less than 400,000 available books is meaningless? LMFAO!!! When does it become meaningful? When the inventory drops to 300,000? Maybe 200,000? And exactly how do you figure that I quoted the numbers "out of context"? They are what they are.

As for the economy, it hasn't hurt PaperBackSwap at all. A little more than a year ago they had four million books listed, now they're up to five million.

As for not finding anything, well, if I might put this politely, horse-apples. If you take the time to really explore (look at things like keywords, alternate spellings, weird editions and whatnot) you can find all manner of treasures... out of print, first editions, autographed, etc. all of which I myself have happily mooched myveryownself.

Now, if all you are looking for is currently popular, top-50 grocery store books, well, then I would say you would do better somewhere else. It's always been like that here. This is not exactly breaking news. People have been complaining about it forever... people being people. In which case, may I suggest you donate your 38 points to a charity, call it a tax write-off if you must, and head on over to whatever site really blows the sparkles up your skirt. Then you won't have to stress yourself over something that clearly annoys the crap out of you.

There are lots of inactive accounts with inventories. I've seen a large handful in the last week, most of whom haven't been on the site for at least 9 months. So, their inventory is in the system, and they are not being "vacationed."

I like Cara's idea...I think we should do it! :-)

Robin

As for your ability to find a ton of books on this site... Congrats! Personally, I've found that most of the books I want aren't readily available on this site. Many of them are available on PaperBackSwap and as I acqure points on that site, I've been getting the books I want. But this is really galling considering that I currently have 38 points on this site that are sitting around collecting dust. Obviously, I'm a somewhat more discriminating reader than some of you guys (maybe that's a negative thing). But this site is definitely not meeting my needs, and judging by the fact that 80% of accounts on this site are inactive, I'd say that plenty of people feel the some way.

As for only wanting "currently popular, top-50 grocery store books", less than five of my wishlisted books could ever be remotely categorized as such.

And like SpongeBob, I can give you a solid reason why inventory has dropped. I used to have close to 600 books in my inventory....until I moved last summer...to a smaller apartment...a much smaller apartment. I'm down to around 200 and still have to whittle back because of lack of room (and yes, they're in boxes). Not only has BM lost inventory with me doing this, I've lost potential pts as I've had to make decisions on what to get rid of(which have been more the top-50 as people seem to want my older, eclectic ones)

To be perfectly honest, I tried out about half a doxen diff sites when I first started about 3-4 yrs ago. BookMooch is the best as far as having READERS for members. Did PBS, bunch of prima donnas over there, just interested in the "now", trendy stuff. Wish I had found BM when I first closed my store.

And as SpongeBob has already come out and said what I've been basically thinking since you started your ranting, "So long, farewell, AufWiedersehn, goodbye", don't let the door hit you.

So you two are saying that when John says there are about 400,000 books available on this site, he's including lots of books that aren't actually available? LOL ...And you all still believe that this site is thriving? Hell, it's worse than I thought.

As for your comment about being a discriminating reader, well, again that is open for VERY subjective interpretation. I could easily say that since others on here who, possibly including you, haven't chosen to mooch Ward and Whipple's "Freshwater Biology" are CLEARLY uneducated boobs with no interest in the finer points of distinguishing aquatic inverts and are probably mouth-breathers who spray when they chew. I mean, hello? Could you possibly make your position a bit more unsympathetic?

Well, if you want to contribute for this site to thrive then you know what to do. But I can not really know what your purpose of being here...I could speculate though...

SPECULATION:
- are you from PBS to get customers for them?
- are you here to hit the pond? criticize and make fun of it?
- are you here to advertise PBS?
- are you telling us that we believe everything John say? and we are going to preach him next?

If one of these are your purpose... Tschüs, paalam, good bye, you're not welcome here!

No, you are not more discriminating, what you appear to be I can not even state, other than to attempt to calm down and say "You know how I've mentioned prima donnas earlier?....."

I picked people who had been inactive for 100+ days, and who had more han just a few books listed in their inventories.

If it works, I'll do 10 or so every couple of weeks.

I have thousands of Books, a tiny percentage of which is listed on BM right now -- including some Readers Digest's books. I have had success moving one or two of them before. Why don't I list more? Economics. I am unemployed... but hopefully soon to be employed again, if the winds are blowing correctly (they seem to be... :).

So you keep putting this idea down, I've presented it before, but here it is. Instead of telling you to go, I'll tell you AGAIN: Why don't you try to increase the BM membership by enticing PBS members to come over here? Why don't you ask family members, co-workers, friends, family , etc., to join? Then BM will be more to your liking, with more books.

Anyway, if your goal was to stir things up, congratulations.

Two more things:
1) I just snagged "The Lost Symbol" from someone... Are you sure you have it listed correctly in your Wish List? I got it here much sooner than I did on PBS. Make sure you add related editions...

2) Two you have a "Friends of the Library" bookstore where you are? In my town, a lot of those Time Life books you have in your Wish List are available. Do you ever check there? Have you checked "Freecycle"?

http://www.freecycle.org/

A lot of people, when getting rid of their books due to moving or whatever, list their books on Freecycle. You might NEVER see the Time Life books because people who normally have them, keep them in their collections. They don't want to give them away. Have you thought of that? You might NEVER see those come-up on BM or PBS!!! You want me to check the FOL Bookstore for some of these titles for you?

I've checked your wishlist and I have at least five books that you wishlisted... so your books aren't impossible to find here. I won't reserved them for you though...rather list them for grabs. But then 5 books will cost you 10 points...they will make your 38 points less.

You make a good point about how many books are being moved by PBS. Many popular titles have hundreds of copies to be mooched. I refuse to spend a rare point on those when I can probably find it at my library's sale bin.

Spongebob - I find it incredibly difficult to find listed books that I would like to mooch and I'm sure it's not a problem with inventory so much as the system. I have tried a variety of different ways of searching in order to find the things I'd like and all too often books come up that are completely unrelated to the search in addition to a liberal amount of that top 50 stuff. Often the search works so slow as it is that I don't have the patience to sit there only for a list like that to be pulled up. ADDENDUM: Searching by author is a pleasant exception, and my searches for books tonight have been nearly instant, as opposed to the 2-5 minute waits I used to have.

Not bashing bookmooch - for me the wishlist has yielded a number of obscure gems I'm quite happy to have gotten. But not all of us have had the same positive experience trying to attain books through other means such as search or watching the recently listed feed.

(Off topic ramble: Another thing that would be really awesome is a bulk wishlist add feature... like checkboxes next to each book that shows up in a search, given I probably want most of them. ;x)

In two or three years when this site dies, I'll come back for one big "I told you so", if I can stop laughing long enough to do it. You guys deserve a dead site.

I don't know if this is of interest in this conversation, but I am actually a very happy member of both BookMooch and PBS. I can't keep my points at PBS, but I can get rid of LOTS of stuff at Bookmooch. And it will all work out in the end. I'm looking to do some more Bulk Mooching now on BM, for a couple of projects I'm working on (Books for Keeps, for kids, and books for Prisoners) so I'm confident I'll be able to use up my 34 points. Maybe I'll go do what Michelle and others have done and mooch from a bunch of "possibly inactive" folks, to help clear things up.

When I joined Bookmooch, like when I join any online community, I read the documents about the group. I found the survey *very* interesting...in that the primary reason people are here is for the Reading Community, and that was unique to BM.

So maybe those who are more hit and run (I'm not sure how else to characterize it) will drop by periodically, but when you get someone who sticks, you'll know you've got quality.

Maybe that's what John is after. Quality. not Quantity.

Robin

JOHN -- tell us if you want us to stop helping! :-)

@Robin Maybe if each American were to take a letter of the alphabet, we could work through this really quickly! Also, if each American (and everyone else) were to post 1 highly wishlisted book it would help. Also, just once, find someone in another country who has trouble getting books. See if you have something on their wishlist, or can find it really cheaply and send it to them. I realize sending internationally is a challenge for many, but just once? Or find an angel who will send it on for you. If we can remember that Bookmooch is more than a "free book service" and stop approaching it as consumers and start approaching it as a really cool book club with benefits we will all have a better reading community.

Okay, off soap box;)

Too bad.

His loss, not ours.

We made an effort.

I myself, tried to give hims suggestion on how to make his reading enjoyment increase with the use of Bookmooch. He rebuffed me, he rebuffed Cara, and in the end, he left in a foul mood.

As I said before, I learned more about the Book Community AFTER I joined book mooch... So this site has been heaven sent for me.

@Robin - thanks for your initiative with the "vacationing" project....I should let you know, however, that I've had one rejection and two acceptances from some of those "inactive" members, so please be sure to mooch only with points that you can afford to lose :)I won't cancel my requests of those members - perhaps sending books to me will get them being more active again!

Have a great day everyone.

Most of all I will continue to enjoy it when I get a message saying "I never thought I'd find this!"

All I can say is, for those who are unhappy/dissatisfied with BM just leave without disrespecting BM and the other members who enjoy it.

Reading is a pleasure and an escape from the drudgery of everyday, being able to share the experience with others is a positive. The world has enough problems, let's not add more negativity.

Thank John for even coming up the concept and taking the time to maintain the site.

That's my 2 cents worth.

Sure I could give them to my library instead, but this way I know they are going to someone who really wants them, rather than just dumping them on the library for them to be stuck with.

the main reason I joined book mootch was to try to get the books i want from the uk but that is not happening but finding lots of new and cool books to mootch everyday and when i read a book i mootch it back

As for donating them to libraries, a lot of my books are so old, chances are they'd just end up being sold off at the library's book sales. Which is fine, but then if they library can't sell them, I don't know what happens to them.

I like the improvements in the recommendations (it seems much better than I recall in the past). And while "Hide" is useful, it seems like it would make the whole thing better if there was "Hide - you got it wrong I have no interest at all in that book" and "Hide - I've already read that book" That would help BM to learn about what I've read before/outside books acquired and traded through BM (the vast majority of what I've read).

I'm impressed at the quality of the suggestions given what it doesn't know about my reading tastes, but unfortunately the top several recommendations are things I have no desire to read at all (the New Moon books) or have already read. And I don't want to have to repeatedly page through a bunch of uninteresting/unhelpful recommendations if I can help BM make better recommendations while moving the others out of the way.

As I already mentioned it before in other thread: The question is, how dedicated are you to BM? Are you here for fun? Are you here only to get rid of your unwanted books? Are you here to enjoy the community, share books and interest with others? Let get serious everyone...ask ourselves first why are we here! I get tired hearing complains of not getting books while there are a lot of explanation lately how to get it.

This is a community of booklovers...if you're not one of us then you should not be here. Ask yourself if you're supposed to be here and what are your motives of being here.

I think there are a few booksellers on Bookmooch, but as a way to keep your inventory stocked, Bookmooch would not be a very reliable source. When a highly wishlisted book pops up on my wishlist more often then not, if I don't grab it;) the person who mooches it is just lucky or a "power user": someone who's day job allows them to check their RSS feed frequently and is able to jump on wishlist books as soon as they are posted. Or else the book is reserved for someone. If there were some very successful book sellers on Bookmooch snapping up all the highly wishlisted books you would see the same few names appearing more than once in the "previous moochers" list and you don't. Also, many of the highly wishlisted popular books are available at Amazon for the mythical 0.01. There wouldn't be much profit margin in mooching those books just to resell. Bookselling is hard work. Independent booksellers are a endangered species. If there are any on Bookmooch scoring the occasional more valuable book to resell, more power to them, IMHO

Find friends with the same interests in your reading to swap books with.