For those of you who aren't familiar with BookMooch, it's a free website where you list books that you own that you are willing to give away. In return, when you give a book away you are awarded "points". You can use these points to request, or "mooch" a book from someone else. Basically, you get books for nearly free. All it costs you is the postage to send the books that people request from you. It's a pretty sweet deal and I use the site frequently.
Now...as with any transaction-based website...there are problems. When dealing with other people...I often find certain breeches of what I think are fairly standard rules of etiquette. Here are a few of them that particularly irk me:
1.) People who are anal about the book condition, edition, etc; to the point of imposition. Listen...I know you'd like to get your hands on a first edition collector's edition.....but the book I'm offering is FREE, okay? It's the book you were looking for. Other than that, I'm not going to start dong reseach to confirm that this is the book from this printing, that publisher or whatever ridiculous question you have about this FREE BOOK that I'm sending to you
2.) People who leave negative feedback. Again...the website is FREE. If I agreed to send you a book and it got lost, I just forgot, or whatever...you're not out of pocket for anything.
3.) People who "reserve" books for someone. If you're holding it for someone...don't freakin' list the book as available! Noting is quite as aggravating as finally finding a particular book only to hear "ohhh...yeah...I'm kinda saving that for so and so".
4.) People who want to work out side deals. Sometimes people want to arrange trades, use alternate methods of shipping or whatever...and, invariably they say "Just pick whatever you want from my list and we'll work it out." And...equally invariably...all of their books suck.
Cash
USA
OLD SKOOL
APR 15, 2009 09:50 AM