A friend of the Doctor recently acquainted me with MyBookYourBook.
This is a book exchange service, whereby you pay a fee, and offer ten of your own books to the pool. You can then choose up to five books per month, and to get hold of one of these, you have to send an SAE to the person currently holding that book. Books offered must be deemed suitable according to the terms and conditions, and padded envelopes can be ordered from the website, again for a fee.
The flaws?
Obviously it’s a business, hence the fee; but this could easily be done on a non-profit basis. At least it is less haphazard than book-crossing, which has always appealed to me, although I’ve never done anything about it.
On top of the fee, you have to provide the SAE every time you require a book – so that’s £2 per book. If you regularly buy your books in charity shops, you are already contributing to a book-recycling scheme, for a lower price AND for charity.
So far the list of books is not that great. Of course if it takes off, it will improve, but there’s no guarantee that the other book-offerers will be like-minded readers, and so the Rushdies and the de Berniereses may never appear on the list.
I tried to set up a book-swap scheme on Uborka, and only ever managed to get rid of one book: Room At The Top by John Braine
Hmmm so what you need is some sort of centrally “controlled” site where people can list the books they want to swap, and other members can choose to swap them??
A Wiki would do, probably…
I’ve signed up for MybookYourbook, just got the gubbins through for it last night, in fact.
However, as I’m off for a week, I won’t be able to give a decent review of whether it works or not for at least a fortnight.
Still, we’ll see. The selection’s a bit shonky at the moment, it has to be said.
I’ll swap books with you, Pete. What ya got?
(points at Karen)
Her books.