I recently wrote a blog post Brett Tomlinson's charts and analysis looking at some of the health measurements of BM.

Most things look ok to me, except for the overall decrease of about 15% in mooching this year, vs both the 2008 and 2009 years.

One thing I am thinking about is "monetary policy", or in plain terms, how people earn points on BookMooch.

I read up a *lot* before starting BookMooch, and one of the main problems with other exchange sites was a lack of currency float, which caused the economy to slowly contract, and often ended up with the exchange economy locking up.

Back in 2005, when I was thinking about how points should be earned in BookMooch, I read an article titled "Monetary Theory and the Great Capitol Hill Baby-Sitting Co-op Crisis."

Economist Paul Krugman wrote an excellent article about this babysitter crisis. I quote:

most couples were anxious to add to their reserves by baby-sitting, reluctant to run them down by going out. But one couple's decision to go out was another's chance to baby-sit; so it became difficult to earn coupons. Knowing this, couples became even more reluctant to use their reserves except on special occasions, reducing baby-sitting opportunities still further. In short, the co-op had fallen into a recession. ... eventually ... more coupons were issued, couples became more willing to go out, opportunities to baby-sit multiplied, and everyone was happy. Eventually, of course, the co-op issued too much scrip, leading to different problems ...

As I looked at macro-economic theory, many economists advocate that a growing economy needs inflation in order to fuel that growth.

That's exactly what I did with BookMooch: I made it fairly easy to earn points, and BookMooch experienced very significant growth, partially thanks to that system, with mooches/year peaking at 750,000 mooches/year.

However, an assumption of this macro-economic theory is that steps will be taken in the future to curb inflation once the economy begins to "cool".

BookMooch is now handling about 550,000 mooches/year. This is still great, but does represent a cooling of the book mooching economy.

So... I think this means it's time to consider changes that will curb mooch point inflation.

You can see on this page how points are earned:
http://bookmooch.com/m/points

Points are created when:
1) you type 10 books in (+1)
2) you leave feedback (+0.1)
3) you mooch a book from another country (+1)

Let me write about each of these in turn.

Number 1 is, I believe, not actually inflation. The reason is that inflation is usually defined as a decrease in the buying power of a unit of currency. If you type 10 books into BM, you have added the equivalent of 10 points of "goods", which others can now use to spend their money. This is perhaps debatable, but I don't think I want to change this reward, as it's the main way a) brand new users earn points to get started and b) provides a great incentive to add books to the BM inventory, thus enriching all of us who already have BM points

Number 2 is something I think we could do without. Everyone leaves feedback automatically when they mark a book as received. This isn't a behavior we really need to promote as it is likely to happen without the +0.1 gift.

Number 3 helps promote international mooching, which is a core personal goal of mine. However, with 1 in 5 mooches being an international mooch, this represents a significant source of inflation (110 points created per day).

There are three solutions I see to this problem:

A) balance the cost of international mooches at 2 points cost, 2 points received by the sender

B) balance the cost of international mooches at 3 points cost, 3 points received by the sender

C) create a new charity account for "promoting international mooching" that members would donate to, and leave the current "2 points to mooch, 3 points to the sender" system, but take the point out the charity account rather than creating a new point. This would prevent inflation, but would also depend on a fairly large donation pool (about 40,000 points/year would need to be donated)

Those are my current ideas for decreasing mooch point inflation.

I would like to promote "multimooching", i.e. the mooching of several books from one person at one time. This saves the sender a lot of money in postage costs.

One way to do this is to make the first mooch 1 point, and then knock 10% off the 2nd mooch, and 20% off the 3rd mooch, like so:

Cost of same country mooches:
1st book: 1 point
2nd book: .9 points
3rd book: .8 points
4th book: .7 points
5th book: .6 points
6th book: .5 points thereafter

Cost of International mooches:
1st book: 2 points
2nd book: 1.8 points
3rd book: 1.6 points
4th book: 1.4 points
5th book: 1.2 points
6th book: 1 point thereafter

With this idea, the points received for sending would stay constant at 1 point/same-country or 2 points/international, only the cost would change.

I'm sure this post will provoke strong reactions from some people, so I urge you to keep in mind that

a) these are only thoughts, not policy and

b) my goal here is to have a discussion, not to dictate or to have people flame war.

-john

I absolutely love that bookmooch is the only mooching website that doesn't expect me to enter a credit card number to be a member and really appreciate that even though it is free you are continuelly working to keep it updated and running cleanly. This is the only book trading website I have found that operates under this ideal and I believe that any changes necessary to maintain this ideal are completely acceptable.

As always whenever I read one of your updates I really appreciate the thought and concern you put forward for your users. I really enjoy reading your updates and getting a chance to not only learn about the running of the website but also to have a say in the proposed changes.

Thank you so much John for all your hard work! Bookmooch will most definately continue to be my favorite place to visit online!

I sometimes have to delay mooches and I admit that I wish those credits weren't sitting in my account, as I don't feel like I have really "earned" them yet until I have send the book.

As far as prize for marking a book received, I agree it can probably go. It's just courteous, and those who aren't going to do it certainly aren't going to do it just for a .1 point.

The main source of inflation in my account is from adding books. Those of us with large inventories have lots of points we never earned and would disappear if the books were delisted. I always know in my head how many of the points are "real" and how many are virtual... that is, if I removed my whole inventory because I didn't want to send books anymore, I would still have X number left to spend. I wonder if it would make sense to have some sort of "real" and "provisional" points, so that you can't get too deep into the virtual points... like using a credit card you may never pay off. Not sure if this actually would help what you are trying to solve in any way, but just thinking about my own "inflation."

Thanks again for all your hard work to keep people reading, keep books out of trash piles and keep the written word appreciated instead of languishing on shelves.

Nicki

The person who posted about hoarding points by not sending mooched items makes a great point. If that's something that happens a lot that should definitely be addressed.

For me, my mooching books from people has cooled a bit since I started, only because the books that I really want don't come up that often. I don't really see points as having anything to do with it.

Also, I don't list books for others to mooch on a very frequent basis, only because I don't have books I'm ready to let go of on a very frequent basis--again, to me, I don't think of points as being a factor in this.

I guess I don't really see any kind of inflation going on. But then I'm not one of those moochers I've seen here who have hundreds upon hundreds of points, and hundreds upon hundreds of completed mooches. I operate on a much, much smaller scale.

I would do multi-mooches from people more often if they had multiple books I wanted, but honestly, most of the time, they don't. Usually, I find one book from their inventory that I want and that's it. I do check a person's inventory when I mooch just to see if there's something else they have that I want.

So it seems a bit unfair to reward multi-mooches, because then it seems like those who don't do multi-mooches are being penalized. I don't want to have to mooch more than one book if I only want one book, just to get more points.

I kind of think getting that little +0.1 point for leaving feedback IS a good incentive for people to mark a book received in a timely fashion, although I can see how it could go away without it being that big of a deal. I dunno. I like getting that little extra bit when I leave feedback on a book I received, and I like that someone gets a little extra bit when they leave feedback for me on a book they received.

I like the international mooch points system just fine the way it is. Again, it's not something I see as needing fixing.

I am also wondering how much other factors have put downward pressure on the number of mooches per year, such as a lower number of new users joining (I am assuming that on average new users are more active, but realize this assumption could be incorrect) or a perceived decrease in the quality/breadth of overall inventory.

The point system change to encourage multiple mooches from one party is I think is a very good one, though it is unfortunate that it may not benefit non-US users very much.

The only thing I can think of that might help is a recommendations systems of some sort, but that would be far from easy to write, unless there's an engine out there you can piggyback on. I'm thinking of something that says "Other people who mooched this book mooched.." or "People with similar wishlists also want..." or or some way of pointing out books people may be interested in without being aware of.

I'm concerned about how the proposed changes for international shipping would impact the angel system. Many international mooches currently take place using angels. An angel currently earns two points per book after spending one point to mooch it in the first place. This is less profitable than sending a book you own yourself, but it is still usually a reasonable enough return per point that it is financially feasible for the angel. If the two points per book system is put in place then an angel would only be earning one point per book. That is the same return as a domestic mooch, but at a far higher cost. While I know that there is a strong motivation among angels to help others the system must also be financially affordable.

And what about those who don't mark a book as received? Then don't let that member mooch again until he/she does mark the book received or, after a reasonable amount of time, mark the book as lost.

Instead I wonder if something else is driving the drop. Some possibilities: (Sorry if this is too detailed...I work as a market analyst...)

1/ International economic conditions - I wonder where the biggest drops have come from. Australia and Asian economies are still very healthy, whereas Europe and US less so.

2/ A drop in new moochers, if that's the case. I agree with another person who has commented that I was more active when new and now have less books which people want and less books I want to mooch become available

3/ The rise in international cheap book sites. For example, I stop and think when mooching a book internationally as a mass market paperback from Book Depository costs about $10, whereas my average point earned cost about $7 or $8 (I tracked for the first few months). This means I now prefer to send books overseas to earn the 3 points and mooch locally.

So what else could we do? I think improved search functionality would help me to mooch more (and hence encourage me to look for more books to earn more points). Some ideas might include other ways of searching for books from my country only other than browsing the new eg. excluding certain authors or books that have more than X listed, sorting search results by author or title, excluding books with more than X copies listed etc. Currently if I want to browse for books which I might want to mooch, I pull a list of 8k books which can't be searched in any way. I know the genre is meant to help, but obviously isn't used that much.

Any way hope these comments help. I love the site and have got great amounts of pleasure both sending and receiving books.

First, I really love the site. And, I offer this only as constructive feedback. Truth is, if nothing changed, I'm already pretty happy with the service for the two months I've been using it.

About 10 years ago I read a really fascinating article in the WSJ about pricing. The bulk of the article was about the movie business. And, it asked a really simple question, that has no good answer: Why do you pay the same price for a movie ticket, whether the movie is a constant sell out (e.g., very high demand) or some crappy movie that will only be in the theaters for 2 weeks. Think Jaws vs. Texas Chainsaw Massacre. There are few other goods where quality has no influence upon price.

Yet, that's the bookmooch system. Amazon provides the value of the books on my wishlist. Of the 500 books or so on my wishlist, the price ranges from $0.01 (about 100 or so of the books) up $5, (maybe another 200 or so), $10 to $20 (another 100), and roughly 100 books more than $20 bucks. And, as any decent economist could imagine -- there are many more books available at the bottom (the $0.01 range) than at the top.

Although, the comment sought to stop inflation -- my proposal, self-admittedly, would increase inflation. What if one were allowed to list books and set the rate, say either 1, 2, or 3 points to get book X. After all, prices can be a very important tool in an economy. Indeed, there is a _value_ to the bookmooch points; and if that value is less than the most in demand books currently, one can reasonably expect many people standing in line for a discounted good, that will be in very very short supply (as an example, there are dozens and dozens of people listed for Keith Richards, Life -- yet, not a single copy has come up as available in the past two months). I suspect -- but I certainly don't know -- that those who have that book, decide they don't want to trade a $20 book for $1 moochpoint, so they sell it elsewhere (or hold on to it, since they can't get a market rate for it). Seems to me, if we allowed the holder of life to get 3 points for it, they may be more willing to part with that in demand scarce good.

OK - just an idea. Please criticize it. Tell me how that's stupid and crazy. Honest. I love it when my ideas are challenged; and love it even more when through nothing but pure honest debate of ideas, I come to realize I was mistaken.

ck.

The macro-economic analysis would be more substantive if it takes into consideration real-life factors as the economy and costs (and maybe the rise of ebook use as well).

I wholeheartedly agree with bookel from Australia that money problems overall was a prime factor in the past two years and until now. Let's break that down into less money to buy books that will later be listed for Bookmooch and rising postage costs.

If there are venues and ways where we can address both these major concerns, then I think this will have a positive impact on Bookmooch traffic.

Re less money to buy books, if there are more and more ways we can share with the Bookmooch community on how to buy books at minimum cost, the better. The book price info is one positive step. But I think there should be more active ways, like a permanent forum where people can post great book (bargain) sales, whether of big or small stores (hopefully not-too-many closeout sales), yard sales, library sales and community sales events. And maybe if there are a whole lot of Bookmoochers interested in one book, for example, maybe we can negotiate directly as a Bookmooch community with the publisher or author for a hefty discount.

As to rising postage costs, the new meet-up feature is one measure that addresses this. But there can be other effective ways. Like maybe we can leverage the clout of having so many thousands of transactions a year so we can get very good discounted rates with either the post office or couriers (specially for international sends). I think this can be very much doable in the top five or eight countries with Bookmoochers, and specially in the U.S. In particular, those in the U.S., U.K., Canada and Australia can negotiate with any one of the courier heavyweights (FedEx, DHL, etc.) to give Bookmoochers rates competitive to those the post office gives. Well, you can negotiate with the post office for lower rates as well, why not?

Now of course it doesn't have to be personally you to do the negotiating on the above points, John. Anyone who's willing to take the cudgels to "lobby" these points and who'll have your blessings can do.

It might seem far-fetched for now to squarely face these concerns and do the "unthinkable" step of negotiating for the Bookmooch community. But I believe these have to be and can be addressed, sooner or later.

Re the multi-mooch proposal: it's definitely a good thing if that's in place, though I really wouldn't know how substantive that would impact.

Point inflation always stuck me as a problem of the Bookmooch system. I wrote about it in the forums and on the wiki (Inflation).

My solution is akin yours, John:

1. Consider the book listing bonus as an advance payment: when the book is mooched, the moocher pays 1 point, but the book owner receives only 0.9 points (she already received 1/10 point when she listed the book). The 1/10 reduction may also be seen as a "delisting charge" (the book is no more listed).

2. Balance the international shipping charge: the moocher pays 3 points, the book owner receives 3 (or rather 2.9, if the delisting charge is considered).

3. Remove the 1/10 bonus for acknowledging the book receipt

This would exactly balance the extanting points / listed books ratio.

Awarding multimooches could be an idea, but I see very few times it would actually happen since people very seldom have more than one book I'm interested in. Most of my mooches happen when something on my wishlist appears, so there's only that book I want.

Regional mooching (for Europe, for example) sounds like a good idea. Postage within is usually cheaper than outside, so it might be a good idea to somehow reward at least some sending outside your country, but I'm not sure how to do it from bookmooch's side.

I like the idea of meet-and-mooch, but I suppose it may take a while before it happens where I am.

The point award for leaving feedback can go away without any problems, but decreasing it for listing books would be bad for bookmooch. The mooch rate apparently has gone down, and the main reason that I don't mooch more than I do is simply that the books I want are not available. Partly because the books I want are obscure, but also partly because some of the books I want are in Swedish, and it's ususually difficult to put them on a wishlist because bookmooch doesn't allow you to wishlist books that it doesn't know about. In effect, that means I can't wishlist a Swedish book unless someone else has listed it before so that it is in the system. Allowing at least non-english users to list withlist items by ISBN/name would probably make more trade happen.

I think more reasonable would be a "frozen" point or a deposit of sorts. For example .5 points at time of mooch and .5 points at time of receipt. Or take away the point from the moocher immediately and award it to the sender only when the book has been received.

I would also suggest keeping the point system as is on the international sector. Being and anglophone living in Italy I like to mooch most of my books from the USA or the UK and likewise offer mine worldwide, but there is much less incentive to do so, considering the cost of postage, if there is no gift point.

I am against the multimooching options. Sending books together is only slightly advantageous for me, and after a certain weight it is pretty complicated to send. Plus I would prefer, even if long term was more money, to receive 6 mooches separately over 6 months, than have to pay out for a heavy package of 6 books separately. Maybe a slight discount for a second mooch, but really it makes no sense to me to make the 6th book really cheap to mooch - I sending 6 books is going to be expensive, not everybody wants to invest that much at one go! (plus it does make me sort of happier to spread books over several people and countries)

And as Cindy mentioned - if you change the point system as indicated in your post, you are seriously going to effect the 'angel' network; really lower the numbers here IMHO. At the moment the 2.2 points are at least close to the usual 3 points - but if you take away the 0.1 for marking received, and change the amount it costs I, for one, will probably step away from angel-mooching; and I do a LOT of that as it has to be worth my while in what is often a lot more hassle than mooching for yourself.

We need to find ways to increase the incentive to post abroad, not decrease it, or BookMooch will become just another of the local country book-swapping systems - and that may be inevitable. But as this is the only swapping site I have the option to use that would be most devastating to me; and possibly a lot of members in other countries beside US and UK.

As I said, this is just a thought.

I think that regional settings would help - I get the same points to send a book to Europe as to the Rest of the World even though sending a boook outside Europe costs almost twice as much.

What about extra points for heavy books? I have cookery books which I would like to list, but will not post because of the cost. I personally would be happy to "pay" a premium with extra points to get a book I really wanted. It's better for me to mooch a book and pay extra points which I have rather than pay Amazon for it.

also I believe that there needs to be a way for Angel moochers to be re-imbursed for the point they use in getting the book. There are very few Angel requesters who give the point back which means that apart from trying to be a nice person, why should I be an angel?

1) I think taking away the .10 for providing feedback wouldn't be an issue.
2) I would be fine with making the international exchange 2 point for the moocher, 2 points for the sender...however, I wonder if for some senders the 3 points is an incentive to pay the higher postage rates knowing that they could essentially get 3 more books in their own country later.
3) I think adding incentive for people to request more than one mooch is fine, and I do try to do this myself, however, I more times than not do not find additional books I want to read at the time I'm making the mooch.
4) Has anyone proposed increasing the rate earned for listing new books? My list of books I'd like to mooch is relatively long, but it is often months before any are available for me to mooch, so it's hard to maintain the right mooch percentage. If we increased the rate related to listing books, it might increase the available pool and thus books people actually mooch.

Thanks for keeping this site up, running, and amazing! I love it!!

Darcie

And if you increase the cost of mooching a book internationally from 2 to 3 points, then that results in disadvantaging even further those members in the non-US and non-UK countries. We (I'm also in Australia) more often than not need to spend 2 points to obtain books that most US members can get for 1 point. Yet very few people want to mooch from us as either the local population is too small, or the folk in the larger member countries don't want to spend the 2 points, or don't need to as the book will probably surface for them in their own county sooner or later.

As bookel said, members in smaller countries struggle to get their points up unless they are Angels. And if the Angel network dies . . .

So please do not change the point system wrt to reducing the point incentive to send internationally. Or if you do, then only reduce it to 2 points for sending 'within the region'. By this I mean US to Canada or within Europe. Members in countries such as Canada and Australia are already doing it hard - please don't make it even harder. If your aim is to increase the cross-border mooches, then this is not the answer.

If you want to guarantee the mooch a ahead of time, contact me first.

Jay

An idea that I just got would be to increase the amount of points you get for listing popular books. Any book listed gets you .1 point, as now. When listing a book that is on someone's wishlist you get .5 points. If it's on 10+ wishlists, 1 point, and on 50+ wishlists 2 points. The numbers are taken off the top of my head, but you get the idea. I want to make it more attractive to list more popular books on bookmooch and not just the stuff that your friends don't want.

All that said, I find that I have accumulated over 400 points and have no particular interest in "spending" these points. I routinely give points to charity, but the number of points continues to grow. I agree with Hans that we need a greater number of books to choose from, but I think the tenth of a point for acknowledging a book received can easily be eliminated. The cost of international shipping should be considered before fooling around with the points given the shipper. I would, however, not mind at all if I paid three points for requesting a book from a foreign location. In general, I think few people abuse the system, although some will always do so.

Over all, I like Bookmooch very much, find that most people are reliable, and some very friendly. The numbers may have decreased a bit, but that may well the because of the financial bad times. Even those of us not directly affected by the recession feel a need to be cautious about how we are spending our money.

I'd be OK with the 0.1 for listing considered "advance payment", and the remaining 0.9 or 2.9 credited only when the book is marked as sent rather than just requested. Thought that wouldn't prevent some people from marking as sent when it isn't I guess.
Not sure about giving the point(s) only when the book is marked received, that'd be one more reason to be leery to send abroad as it may take way longer to be credited or able to terminate a mooch gone to a no longer responsive recipient.

Lessening cost for multiple mooches would be a great idea. If it also means less points to sender though (as I understand your proposal, it wouldn't, sender would receive the difference from the BM system ?) there may be some countries were postage mathematically follows the weight increase rather than gently diminish with larger parcels, so they should be able to opt out of such a system. France doesn't have flat-rates, but cost-to-weight ratio does diminish with heftier packages so while sending one heavy book on it own locally is a Bad Idea, sending it along with a couple more normal ones gets the average cost about right.

1) they have a label that I can print off to mail the books

2) The sender doesn't get the points until the receiver marks the book received. (I really think this is a policy book mooch should implement!) but the receiver loses their point right away so that they aren't adverse to marking the book received and getting a free book. and the site keeps e-mailing them every so often if the book isn't marked received until eventually the points go back to as they were if the book is lost.

3) I much prefer the way they do their wishlist. It goes in order of who requested. . so when one comes available an e-mail goes out to the next person in line on the list for them to accept or deny and they have so many days to respond or it moves onto the next person. . whereas book mooch is like a rat race. . first person to respond get's it. . that's hardly fair for those people who are at work all day and can't be sitting in front of their computer.

1) Inflation of points seems to be a problem...lots of points being accrued, mostly being added via overseas mooches

2) There needs to be some incentive for joining and listing new books

3) There needs to be some way of rewarding good behavior and keeping people honest.

4) You have to make it worthwhile for people to send books abroad

To address these problems, I think this (or something along these lines) might solve the problems (in part):

Listing a book ------ +0.1 point (for the first 100 books)
Sending a book (D) -- +1.0 points (half on accepting/half on receipt)
Sending a book (I) -- +2.6 points (half on accepting/half on receipt)
Ordering a book (D) - -1.1 points
Ordering a book (I) - -2.1 points
Confirming Receipt -- +0.1 points

(D) = domestic, (I) = international

The incentive for joining is maintained by giving points for the first 100 books, but then you curtail the inflation (in part) by capping it at 100...if you list more than 100 books, you're probably already a fairly established member and don't necessarily need the extra 0.1 points.
You further cut the inflation by reducing the international points for sending from 3 points to 2.6 (or 2.4)...the benefit is still there but it is lessened. It will have repercussions on the numbers of int'l mooches (I am cringing as I type this) but if inflation is as big a problem as it sounds, then this is where the biggest cuts need to be made.
The confirmation incentive is still there, but is canceled out by the minor added cost of the mooch...basically, moochers recoup their tenth of a point by confirming receipt...final cost remains the same as it is now.

In practical terms, an established (more than 100 books previously listed) moocher listing 10 books, sending 5 domestically and 5 internationally while ordering and receiving 5 domestic and 5 international books would come out ahead by 7 points in the current system while under a system like I outlined above, the same person would come out ahead by just 3 points.

Just an idea.

Perhaps to increase multiple mooches, after you have Asked First or Mooched perhaps there could be a section on the next page which shows any books on your wish list that match their inventory.

I think the wishlist size should be unrestricted.

I do very much agree that people should not be able to use points from books that they aren't mailing out. I think that if people are struggling to cope with mailing out their books then they should not be adding more books to their inventory and accepting mooches. But I think this is a side issue, but it just seems to be topical right now

So I guess what I wanted to say was, I see no harm in getting rid of the listing bonus.

2. : I have mixed feelings about delaying receipt of the point until the book has been received, which we don't do now. On the one hand, a lot of the fraud would be cut back, I think, if we had to mark the book received before the sender got their point(s). If this were purely a US website, I'd say make that change. But unfortunately, international packages get delayed and can take months to arrive, and it would be extremely frustrating to be unable to spend those points in the meanwhile.

3. My instinct would be "It ain't broke, don't fix it!" but from personal experience I have to admit that my mooching is way, way down and the number of books I'm listing has also dropped, largely because I can't find a way to spend the points I already have. I'm still reading books, but swapping them on other websites where I always seem to have a point deficiency.

I also agree that there are a number of people on here abusing the system through long delays in sending books, and would support there being some kind of "escrow" account for books that haven't yet been sent out.

In terms of the shrinking number of mooches, i think one of the ways to approach things is to improve the searching capabilities of the site. I've been looking for hebrew children's books. Recognizing the challenge of dealing with different languages/scripts, I've tried to search for children's books from bookmoochers in Israel, and either I've missed something, or it's not possible to narrow like that. It leads to a lot of picking through.

Just a few thoughts from this end. . . thanks so much for all that you do. I really love this site!

Sarah

I think the .1 for marking a book received should be eliminated, or at least capped.

I am an angel and if the rate was changed to eliminate the extra point, I would probably have to stop. My husband is already unhappy with the amount of money I spend on postage, and this would increase my cost per point significantly.

Sending a book overseas is a significant expenditure - about twice the already extravagant cost of a local post.

I would like to see a way to get a corporate book rate on postage (real money.)

I can buy a used book off Amazon for $3.00 - $6.00 and have it shipped to me for under $3.00 - total real money cost of $6.00

It costs me $7.00 - $14.00 to mail a book overseas.

I love the idea that my books are being re-read rather than becoming paper towels. This is especially important for the hard to find and out of print books that are irreplacable, so I am willing to accept some cost.

The real-money cost of Bookmooch is still reasonable, as new books are more at the store.

Keep up the wonderful work and I will spread the word.

I like the way you've phrased this. Ex: 'Will send to Africa, ask first for international.' Grouping it in continents makes a lot of sense.

I've been trying to read all the comments, but what stuck with me was someone mentioning a 'de-listing' fee? Instead of that, what if that last .1 point was only given when the moocher marks the book as received? Sounds flawed actually... If you were to change the international mooching, I think making it 3 for both parties may be fair. (Especially for the Angel moochers.) Or making a charity... Although that may have to be tested to see if people actually do donate to it. And a sizable amount. And then, would the charity automatically give an extra point once your moocher had marked a book sent?

I also dislike the points for money system that was mentioned, read in an article 10 years ago. It sounds a bit like systems on other trading sites.

Would it be possible to, for those who are complaining about not finding books, to list books by their library of congress search features? I mean, when you flip to that page with the copyrights, the categories and genres that book can be found in are there, and most likely all online. I think for some of these people, a large wishlist might be something they need to look into, that was one of the tips I think you set up on the page that suggests how to make BookMooch work more for you. In any case, Amazon has a 'books other people bought' section on their book pages, can we link into that some how for people who aren't familiar with all the books they might like? But, I don't know how crazy this coding might be, only show mooch-able books?

I am sorry that other countries don't have as many moochers as the US might, but I am glad we have bookmooch, and if the lessing points system for multi-mooch doesn't work, that's alright. Sometimes the flatrate envelope doesn't do us anygood, where surface mail would have. But I know that I often can do better getting books from BookMooch than an online seller because media mail in the US allows us to send books at a third to a fourth their original cost. International... is less fortunate. 3 points is fair in the US, maybe mutlimooch could only apply domestically?

Someone mentioned audiobooks in another blog post, and I'm sorry if I'm being annoying by listing all my thoughts in this comment, I hope anything of this is useful to you, John. On the same train of audiobooks, any comic books I have listed on here have been mooched almost immediately. But I could not find many. I've found a couple in foreign language, but they are highly attractive items on book mooch that people like to get and hold on to, because they resell amazingly well. People treat their comic books very well, and can sell in near-mint condition. I'm not sure how to remedy this without resorting to a points per worth system that I am not comfortable with. I could imagine a bonus if your book is mooched within 24s of listing it, something you probably have no control over (unless you have a lot of free time to de-list and re-list your books...) But like Hans Persson said, highly sought after books might give you a bonus, but his might be too large, and if you are asking us for help on inflation, might not be a good idea...

John, I hope you are well, and I hope you didn't suffer through these ramblings of a HS grad. Thank you so much for all you do, I'm glad I have bookmooch for my impulsive reading habits.

An additional suggested change to help move some inventory: While I am intrigued by the idea posted above to assign a 1, 2 or 3 point value to books my gut reaction is that the 1 point per book, regardless of title (and assuming domestic shipping) is simple. And in this ever increasingly complex world I feel simple is preferable - particularly in terms of selling participation to new users. However, it may be worth considering allowing damaged books to be mooched for a half a point. There are several on my wishlist with the condition notes showing more than minimal damage, and I am reluctant to spend a full point on them when I could wait and spend the point on a book in nicer condition.

I support the idea of a cap on the total .1 points for listing books, or the concept of getting .1 for listing a book and then .9 for sending it.

I like the idea of a bonus to those who list new (as in published in the last year or so) books, to those who list books on a high number of wishlists, and to those who list heavy books.

I am against not receiving points until a book is received. Books do get lost in transit, and it also is easy for someone to forget to go online and acknowledge that a book is received.

Yes, there are delays in sending books. I feel badly about the number of times I have not promptly shipped, and I have a large handful of books I really want that have been delayed and have had no response from the listing party. My feeling is that no system is perfect, and over the long run things even out.

I do not mooch from or send to international users very often, so will leave that discussion to those with more experience.

For the rest of us, to get any chance at all of finding books I want, almost all my mooches are international meaning that I send two books internationally and can then mooch three internationally. (In theory I *can* mooch domestically, but the chances of anything interesting being listed are very small. Actually, I've found that most of the Swedish books I've listed that have been mooched have been mooched by people outside of Sweden.)

If you want to go for equalizing, then think about doing it all the way (all mooches are the same amount of points, regardless of where the moocher and sender are). This would probably be fair to everyone except Americans. Still, I don't think such a change would go down well, and I wouldn't vote for it. It ain't broken. Don't fix it. ;)

I buy newer and more popular books from Amazon when they are available at a "reasonable" price. I then list them on my inventory and they are gone within hours. The books on my wish list almost never come up. I end up mooching books that look like they might be acceptable, which they sometimes are, but frequently are not. I feel that I'm not receiving nearly the quality that I'm giving. I keep sending books mostly because I want them to be read, not because I'll be able to use the points.

It bothers me, both as a giver and moocher, that those who constantly patrol their wish list and recent listings (which I am sometimes able to do) snap up the desirable books, while those who are patiently waiting to be notified that a book is available never get the book. It would seem fairer to make the book available to the first 10 people on the wait list during the first 24 hours of listing.

The one gripe i have had, is trying to balance how many points i have with how many i actually have. Recieving them before sending books means i could mooch many books then leave the site before i had ever sent a single book. I haven't and waited till i'd sent at least 6 before i mooched my first, but point remains, it would be easy to join and imbalance the economy before individuals could work out what you were doing based on feedback. It could of course lead to fake "sent" messages, but i believe this less likely than someone starting and then just giving up before finishing deals. Whim on a first week/month and never again. My two pence as a newbie.

Having said that, I would personally not object to some changes if they encouraged more availability of books (increase inventories) and/or discouraged abuse or unfairness. Along those lines, my main thoughts are:

It must be impossible to set a 'fair' system for international points based on postage. I spot-checked the cost from UK of a 200g package, and the relative prices for posting overseas were:
- US/Australia/Europe surface (vs 2nd class) - 1.09
- Europe airmail - 1.15 (vs 1st class)
- US/Australia airmail - 1.86 (vs 1st class)
No doubt every country has a totally different costing structure, so whatever we do will benefit some countries and disadvantage others. However, if the main objective is to encourage international mooches, maybe it's worth introducing a 3rd, intermediate level for low-cost international mooching - something like
- domestic: sender +1, receiver -1
- regional: sender +2, receiver -1
- international, surface: sender +2, receiver -1
- international, airmail: sender +3, receiver -2.

Next, on availability, I agree that improved searching facilities would be very helpful - eg a page count on individual's wishlist (including my own), so I could jump to page 10 of 20 if I wanted to look for an author in the n's or m's. Plus the ability to search the whole site (eg) for wishlist entries for a given author - at present you can only do this one book at a time, and even then (I think?) you more or less have to inventory it to see if anyone wants it?

On ratio of wishlist to inventory - like some others, I have a very large wishlist, because I know most of them will never be available, but I just don't know which. I keep my inventory small (a) to limit how much postage I have to spend at any one time; (b) to avoid collecting too many points that I can't spend; (c) because my 'mount TBR' is rapidly growing, so I don't want too many more just yet; and (d) because it does take a fair bit of time to add to the inventory.

Finally, on encouraging good behaviour, and discouraging bad, my suggestion below is noticably more complex than the current system, but I don't know how it would compare with other sites, or how people would feel. The main changes would be that anyone requesting a mooch pays a 'deposit' that gets redeemed when they acknowledge receipt; and the sender gets part payment on sending, the balance when receipt is acknowledged. This would give a greater incentive for acknowledging books, and reduce the benefits of marking books as sent when you haven't - though I guess we'll never fully eliminate bad behaviour in either direction. Incidentally, the 'deposit' would mean that the 'bank' always holds a pool of points for books in transit, that could be offset against the inflationary effect of the international bonus? (I think!). So it might work like:
Domestic:
Inventory: sender +0.1
Request: receiver -2
Send: sender +0.4
Receive: sender +0.5, receiver +1
Total: sender +1, receiver -1

International:
Inventory: sender +0.1
Request: receiver -3
Send: sender +1.4
Receive: sender +1.5, receiver +1
Total: sender +3, receiver -2

This also eliminates any inflation associated with either adding to inventory or acknowledging receipt. As I say, a bit more complex, but maybe people could live with it?

What *is* at stake is the -1/0/+1 on *feedback* (and the not so nice lines of red with non-positive feedback, even if the comment isn't in itself too nasty).

There'd still be disputes where people disagree about (in)adequacy of the traded book, the other user's behavior, etc... even if the 0.1 bonus point goes. What could be done to avoid it participating in inflation, is having it taken in advance (so the mooch would initially "cost" 1.1 or 2.1) then given back when receipt is acknowledged.

I think mooching is down in general because of the economy - people buying less brand new books to read and then list and/or also the cost of shipping.

I mooch and send less than when I first joined because there aren't the books I want to mooch available and so I don't list my books. Building up a load of unused points is no use to me.

You could take away the 0.1 point for leaving feedback, it doesn't seem necessary but then would people bother to leave feedback and if they didn't, how would you know you dealing with an honest trader?

I'm definitely against changing the international mooch points, I try to send overseas whenever possible but if it's not worth my while, then I'll have to send to my country only.

So, I guess, my vote is leave Bookmooch the way it is :-)

My local library also offers a booksale cart with paperbacks for 50 cents & hardcovers for $1. I can't even look there for wishlisted books because I cannot send them out!!

Also, if you put your wishlist on an RSS feed, you will see how many wishlist books come available, even if you cannot get them. It does help in getting wishlisted books. I know this from experience.
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Regarding the proposal to "even out" the international requests: personally I'm against it primarily because I'm an angel. I try to angel for those members who are nice enough to smooch another point to offset the one that I spent to originally mooch the book, but I can't say no to an angel request.

If the "even points" for international mooches is implemented, then there needs to be an extra point for angel mooches. Actually, there needs to be an extra point for angel mooches now for those people who don't get smooched.
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Regarding the request for "labels": What is stopping you from making labels right now? I make them! Just make a template & fill in the moochers address! If you want prepaid postage, there's stamps.com & paypal... and many others. Labels are not difficult. (customs forms are irritating)

Now to the points issue, I wouldn't mind seeing the .1 point for receiving a book go away. I think most people would still mark their books as received and leave feedback without this incentive. I also would be in favor of limiting the number of points one gets for listing books as well. I seem to recall that when I first joined, there was an additional .1 given for listing wishlisted books, but that then went away (I don't remember why). Maybe give the .1 point automatically for the first 50 books in inventory and then once the 50 books in inventory has been reached only give the .1 for wishlisted books listed after that. (Have no idea how complicated the programming for something like this might be.)

I would be opposed to changing the number of points for international mooches. I know that I probably wouldn't send as much internationally if I was only getting 2 points instead of 3, and I probably would mooch even less from international members if the cost was 3 instead of 2.

One of the things I like most about Bookmooch is the simplicity of the point system, and I think anything that made it more complicated (like fractions of points for various mooches) might make it less appealing for newer members trying to figure it out.

I have to admit that for the past few years I have been listing fewer and fewer books simply because I don't need the points. I am in the US and almost half the books I have sent out have gone internationally while the majority of my mooches have been domestic. This had led to a huge TBR pile (500+) and extra points in my account (at one point almost 600). I have given away points, mooched for others (my mom & sister now also have TBR piles) and I still have a point surplus left to use. Unlike others I don't have a problem finding books to mooch as I have extremely eclectic reading habits (I'll basically read anything with words) I just don't have time to read everyting I currently have and have a hard time justifying spending money for points I am not using even though I know I have books on my shelves that others would love to have.

I agree the +.1 for comments should be eliminated.

I agree it's OK to keep the initial point for posting your first 10 books. It lets a new user mooch something right away instead of waiting.

I would prefer a balance of 3 for 3 for international mooching. Just today I spent over $9 to spend a paperback to France. That is more than triple what it would cost to send that book domestically.

Because of the extra points already in the system, I think many of us already multimooch when we find other books we like from the same sender. I always look for other books and often mooch a bunch at once. And I'm not sure how much incentive those extra tenths would be, especially as so many of us are already sitting on extra points.

I would be concerned if the points given/received for international mooches were changed as I think it would either mean people were less willing to send overseas or unable to angel books (if the points received was decreased to 2) or people would be less willing to mooch from overseas members (if the points cost was increased to 3) and I definitely don't want to see Bookmooch become less international.

I'm on both sites, but I get more wishlisted books from BM than from PBS.

YMMV

I am wondering if there would be a way to give people more incentive to list books that have high wishlist numbers? I have a couple more that I have finished this past week I could list, but I am somewhat hesitant because I'm sure they'll go right away and it looks like I'll have to wait months to find anything I really want to read.

I think that quite a lot of the "regular" moochers are the ones that have a lot of transactions. In my experience, lots of the relatively new users add a bunch of books to their inventories, and then get an unwelcome shock when they have 20+ books that they have committed to sending out with none incoming. Quite often they just reject all the mooches and leave the site never to return.

I like the multiple mooch idea... it would definitely encourage me to browse through inventories more.

I'm really happy with the way the point system works and I think that the extra point for international moochers is a wonderful incentive. Sadly I can't suggest a way to reduce inflation, I'm not skilled in economics. Hope someone better prepared than me could give you insights on that ^___^
I definitely agree that we can do without the +.1 for feedbacks, though, and... maybe it's possible to put a cap on the points earned by adding books to an inventory? Just an idea.

Anyway, keep up the good work: in 2010 BM has become my main source of used books, my gold mine, a dream realized! Every parcel under 2kg that I send out with domestic shipping costs me only 1,28€. International shipping is pricey compared to that, but the greatest sum I've ever spent on that in one go is 18€. For me it's a bargain.
1) I get free space on my shelves because mooching itnernationally means that for every 2 books i send I can mooch 1 abroad... that's fine for me ^___^
2) I "pay" each new book mooched locally only the 1,28€ I used to earn the point it costs (and sometimes 4 or 5 points "cost" me only 1,28€ aka multi-mooching!)
3) international shipping is not so expensive and its costs tend to dilute in the number of local mooches

So I really can't complain. Looking forward to see where this debate will lead ^________^

Gotta do some calculations...

I live in Germany and mooch English books. English books are not that freely available over here forcing me to mooch most of my books internationally.
Half of the books I sent so far have been international (as English books are rare over here, new listings gets mooched locally quite quickly – giving me only 1 point to spend). If it wasn’t for the extra point for sending international, it would make it very difficult for me to get enough points to mooch books.

As mentioned elsewhere, “multi-mooching” would unfortunately not be an improvement. In Germany (as some other European countries mentioned here) we pay per weight. I have not yet posted a package where 2 paperbacks were under 500g, doubling the postage.

Another point raised by someone in Europe, was to have an “area” group as I have no problem shipping to Europe or the UK (it “only” costs 3 times the local rate). The packages I sent to the USA and Australia cost more than 6 times the local rate.

In short, from my point of view the point structure is fine as it is. Please encourage international posting where possible as well as rewarding the speedy posting of books.

Thank you for making this site at all possible and asking for feedback. Much appreciated!

Agree that I am put off putting books in inventory that I know are very popular because they are disappear straightaway and I haven't got anything necessarily to mooch back.

I also think that the moocher should not be deducted any points unless the book is sent. People are quite happy for a book to be delayed sometimes but you shouldn't 'pay for the book' until it is sent.

Just some thoughts and thanks again for everything.

As many said, a drop in the moochers could be attributed to a lot of externalities (that is things outside the mooch economy)...

But I cant really see what is the connection between reducing inflation and reduction of activity. A contraction in the supply of points, will not have a positive effect on the books being sent or received...

So if you really want to curb inflation, the person who proposed that the 0.1 point for listing a book to be an advanced payment, has made a very solid proposition. This means a 20% reduction in the point production from these two particular activities.

Another think that could be done, would be some kind of tax system for those hoarding "too many" points. In order for the tax not to be despicable, the point wealthy person could introduce a friend to mooch and donate him some points to begin his career... Or if he doesn't want to do that, the points could go to a lottery or something with his name on as a donator.

As for people receiving points and not sending the books, well a 50-50 point attribution would be better (50% of points received after the confirmation of the buyer that he got the book).

While these suggestions may be excellent to members from the US, it appears that most international users would be at a disadvantage.

I really don't understand this point inflation issue, but I've never had the problem of having too many points. A lot of the books I mooch are ones that are popular in the US - romance novels or kids books - and I really benefit from the current international points system. If this changed I'd probably have to start buying books online instead.

Overall... I really don't think these suggestions are going to benefit those of us who send internationally on a regular basis and rely on people in other countries sending us books that we can't readily get in our own country.

This may not have occurred to Adeline, but the wishlist is a "pie in the sky" wishlist -- I have no hope of getting most of the books on my list, so I cast my net wide (1000+ books) and I'm lucky if a single book from my wishlist shows up once a month. Most of my actual mooch requests have been books that weren't originally on my wishlist but that just caught my eye in while browsing recently listed books.

So what I do is periodically list about 10 books, which are almost always mooched quickly, and I send them out quickly and reliably. I also send overseas. So I think I'm being quite a responsible and considerate Bookmoocher. Since my books tend to get mooched quickly, I certainly can't afford to list hundreds at a time. But if I had to keep my wishlist also around 10 books, Bookmooch would essentially become useless to me.

And I suspect that would be true for most other non-US residents, and/or people usually after the kind of books that may not be wishlisted in the hundreds, but don't move in very large amounts either.

I am certain that the economic downturn and escalating postage costs have been the major factor in the reduction of the growth of Bookmooch, and partially responsible for the inflationary problems.
Mooch-meets addresses postage costs for people in cities or large countries but makes things more difficult for minority & sparsely populated countries and rural locations (e.g. Australia, countries with between 1 and 20 moochers & those in locations where mooch-meets are not possible).

There is a great variation in postal rates in different countries. The UK has surface postage where international postage for printed paper is standard regardless of which continent it is destined for but weightbased so multimooches are not much of an economy (although possibly some help because of weight increments), the US only has airmail but has flat rate envelopes, postage in some countries is much more expensive comparatively than in others. There is no real way to allow for these differences.

Adding books: if you want to encourage people to add books it is not sensible to remove the incentive to do so.
International mooching: if you want to encourage people to send books internationally it is not sensible to remove the incentive to do so. It might help to have a different mooch price for people who also send abroad rather than to bar people from sending abroad but refusing a mooch on the grounds that the moocher will not also send abroad. (We have constantly sent books internationally, but often I have had to use an angel to mooch back my own journals from people who have happily requested journals from me to their country.) I don't mind sending abroad to people who can't send internationally, but perhaps it might be that you need to 'ask first' even if the person's preference is set to 'will send worldwide' if you won't also send abroad? Whilst I don't wish to refuse to people who genuinely can't afford to send abroad themselves, but I can only do so on a pension because I don't smoke, drink, go out socialising or buy clothes! It is all a matter of priorities. For Bookmoochers outside the US it is noticeable that far fewer US Bookmoochers seem to send abroad now.

A number of people have mentioned that people need to be encouraged to send promptly and not mooch without sending books from their pending list, places like Ebay and Amazon show how rewards for leaving feedback is the only way to keep that happening as standard on Bookmooch:

Like famulus my suggested sytem is more complex than at present:
Listing a book -----...........+0.1 point

Sending a book (D) ............+0.4 point
Sending a book (I) ............+0.9 point (or +2.0points)
When book is received (D)......+0.5 points
When book is received (I)......+2.0 points (or +0.9point)

Ordering a book (D) ............1.0 points
Ordering a book (I) ............2.0 points
Confirming Receipt ............+0.1 points
(D) = domestic, (I) = international

Yvann's point " penalisation for people who do not send within a certain time frame is already in place in the form of the reminder and cancel system." does not apply to BMjournals where there is only one copy available, and cancellation may well result in the journal being kept permanently by the moocher. Some benefit for prompt sending might be the answer, or delaying the receipt of points until the book is at least sent, or divided between sending and receipt.

biggs_l point about new moochers is also valid. Perhaps there should be a cap on mooching until a book has been sent and received. I add 'and received because I have seen cases where a moocher has accepted 20 requests for highly wishlisted books and mooched an equivalent number, but actually never sent any books out. That surely can't help the inflation rate, although it is good that Bookmooch largely always instigates a reward system rather than a punishment regme.

...and as marmarlade says "Regarding the request for "labels": What is stopping you from making labels right now? I make them! Just make a template & fill in the moochers address!" I do too - with the Bookmooch logo on them, my sender's address and PRINTED PAPER along the top, I keep it as a file and simply copy and paste addresses in and print as needed, with a few spares to handwrite when mooches are slow.

Someone also mentioned 'balancing' wishlists with inventory. I'd be unhappy with that happening, as I largely mooch journals and keep my own journals wishlisted simply to keep track of them! I also wishlist different editions of any books I'm looking for.

Perhaps we could have a bank where people could deposit surplus points to benefit Bookmooch. Journallers often give smooches, and I always return a point or two when light journals are multimooched, but these could as easily go into an 'inflation charity account'.

Just a few thoughts!

I don't think any point system to list a bk is necessary but I can see it for encouraging newbies just learning their way around. I don't feel that I need to be rewarded for listing books-I am listing them to move them to a new owner--not due to any point system. Still, if push comes to shove that might can go. So can the reward for posting feedback. I would be happy to go with a straight point per bk recorded
as recd, altho I realize some people refuse to even post that they've recd it.

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As a USA moocher of nearly 3 years, my 'problem' with BookMooch (and also PBS) is actually with me having sufficient $'s available to ship books. (have only a tiny social security) Currently I have over 30 mmp's sitting on the corner of my desk, all 'wished for' (I've checked)...but I don't presently have enough postage or $'s to list em and ship em out when they're mooched.

Once or twice a year, 'tho, I carefully and deliberately budget for international shipping. I LOVE shipping internationally due to the incentive of the extra points. lol. Plus I like knowing some of my books are out all over the world. During the last three years, I've racked up nearly a doz different countries. yippee.

However I rarely mooch internationally cause I 'hate' paying the extra point cost ... plus some non-USA folks don't like to ship to USA moochers that aren't also shipping international. I've been chided by a fellow that declined to ship to me in the USA because I was listed as 'only in my own country' (due to not being able to afford international postage fees) ... but I did, & do, have sufficient points from active USA mooching. ah well.

I do wish it were an option to 'buy' points, either from the site or from a listing of folks that would like to sell points. Periodically I yearn to buy points...because, since the advent of the near-real-time Twitter of books just posted, I tend to find way too many books I'd like to mooch, and usually have way too few points for all I 'keep finding'. sigh.

So...in general, BookMooch as it currently is...is 'fine'...I just WISH I could occasionally BUY points.

Let me say (again!) that I see the value in reducing inflation. I'm sure I'm not the only BookMooch user with a surplus of points that I don't know what to do with, leaving me with little incentive to add more books to my inventory. Consider all the BookMooch charities too that have asked not to be given any more points seeing as they have way more points than books to mooch with them.

Now, of the three instances mentioned above in which points are created, I agree with John that we could do without the latter two - feedback and international mooches.

I think it's ridiculous to believe that people are going to stop acknowledging receipt of mooched books when that incentive is taken away. I don't know about other people, but I'm going to keep leaving prompt feedback just to keep my 'pending' tab from getting cluttered. Also, I like telling the sender that the book arrived. I just do. If 2000 books are sent each day (is this figure still accurate), then we are creating 200 points a day through this, which is almost twice as many points as we're creating through international mooches (approx. 110).

As for international mooches, I think the next step should be not to get rid of that bonus altogether, but perhaps to halve it (2 points from moocher, 2.5 points to sender). Then there's still an incentive to send books internationally, but we're only creating 55 points a day. I think that's a fair middle ground.

Now John, I don't want to talk too much more, because I know you're getting bombarded with plenty of proposals and suggestions (at least half of which seem totally ridiculous or idiosyncratic), but some serious attention should be paid above to the comments from users tkleff and Hans Persson regarding in demand books. There should be some sort of incentive for users to put heavily wishlisted books in their inventory. I see lots of ways this could be done, but the simplest might be for those heavily wishlisted books to be worth a point or two more in terms of both the cost for mooching one and the reward for sending one. Note that such a change would not increase inflation. Then people can check the list of the most wishlisted books (http://bookmooch.com/m/top/wishlist) to strategically add the books to their inventory that would give them the most points.

Thanks for your help with all of this John, and I'm sorry that you're going to have to go through all of these comments and make a call.

Now, it it a good thing, when people like me are sitting on 200+ points? Probably not. But, I haven't had a lot of luck in my wishlist lately, and the last two charities I gave to closed, so that really disappointed me.

As always we will trust your judgment John as far as the point system goes.

And, this information is on my profile, so someone can always choose not to mooch from me if it's a big issue.

It is this surcharge that is seriously affecting my ability to continue to send to the US. Much as I hate to, am thinking of going ask first. Haven't done it yet, people pleaser that I am, I don't like knocking people back.
The ever increasing postal costs for other world-wide is getting prohibitive too.

The AUS:USD is about parity now.
So, just to give non-Aussies an idea, the average cost for an Aussie to now send a book OS is anything from $15-$35 !! (or more for multis)
ie: a book over 453 grams is $15 postage & $9 security surcharge.

See what I mean?

I always wondered why some people asked for others to mooch multiple books! It's cheaper to mail from the U.S.! Here, it just costs more if it weighs more and is bigger size-wise. Like a few others have said, though, I wouldn't mooch multiple books just for the points. I only mooch the books I want.

Thanks for getting feedback before implementing changes. Much appreciated!

I am from Canada and send overseas regularly. Right now I have about 6 books I am preparing for Israel, and some for the Philippines. Some of these books take a long time to be marked received. Having my points tied up for months would make me much less likely to send to places with slower postal systems, and that is not fair to users there. As a member with 100% feedback I would also not appreciate being treated like a criminal who cannot be trusted with my own points. Perhaps that could be applied for the first 10 or so books a new member sends out, but not for regular members.

I also found several comments here short sighted. I tend to prefer to send out large batches of books at once, when I have saved up the $$. To that end I will post a large number of books at one time (I have 37 books accepted to send right now, primarily since Saturday). This increases the chances of someone finding a multiple mooch, and lessens the amount of trips I need to take to the post office. I am trying to get a year or so of points in one go (and received a cheque for some textbook work recently so I can do so).

Several commenters seem to disapprove of this situation because a) I have lots of books to be sent right now which are not sent and b) I am 'hoarding' points. If I were limited in the number of requested books at a time I would be posting a much smaller number of books. I do not want to make a trip a week to the post office to mail books. This would result in fewer books being available from me.

I agree that changing the international points scheme would be the death knell of not only angeling, but likely of international mooching as well. Combined with the multimooch rule which is also American-centric I am wondering if bookmooch will remain and international site or if it will in essence become another PBS with rules upon rules about numbers of books and acceptable delays, etc.

I think that the system you set up to begin with is excellent the way it is. I'm just a private reader, but over the last 2 years, I've both mooched and given about 1,000 books.

I used to always accept international mooches, however when the US Postal Service eliminated Parcel Post (and never had International media mail- which is the cheapest way in the US ) for International mailing, that made it lots more expensive to ship internationally. Without that added 3rd point for international mooches, it wouldn't be worth it to list my books internationally. I love to send books internationally when I can afford it; once I sent a whole box of french books to a school in Madagascar. It was really neat sending them out to kids I knew really needed them, but it was HUGELY expensive.

I like the option of giving points to charities too; that helps to keep the points in circulation. There are certainly many worthy charities that benefit from Bookmooch.

With the economy down, I can only afford to ship fewer books. So that may be part of your downturn in volume. And as my husband points out, I have huge stacks of books to read that I've already mooched.

I like the 1/10th point for listing and leaving feedback. In the cases where the person is out to scam the system, it doesn't take long for the Bookmooch community to smell the rat, because of the feedback.

I'd just like to say that I really appreciate everything you've done to make this a great system. After I read many of the mooched books, I give them to a friend, who can't even afford to participate in Bookmooch, because on her disability income, even the average cost of a US book postage at about $2.00, is beyond her means. So the Bookmooch ripples spread out in other ways too. So keep up the great work.

THank you for opening this thread where I have read some very good ideas and gained insight into the system.

I know this for a fact as I was charged incorrectly initially and got my money back as I keep my receipts. The first missive was incorrect and indicated ALL parcels but it is an aviation security issue ONLY.

It does, however impact on my mailing for mooches to the US, and this forum. I will never consider sending air mail to the US if over 500g with this extra charge.
Hope this removes your concerns about the surcharge,
~ Lyn

I'm not, however, at all happy with the idea of removing points for listing inventory or capping points for inventory.

If you can only earn points by accepting mooches, then there will be those who will rush to buy up cheap copies of highly-wishlisted books and send them out to earn points. BM will become a dull site with just the same old airport bestsellers. And what about those of us who don't have access to books in our language or second-hand or charity bookshops in order to fill a wishlistable inventory?

As I commented earlier, there are many people not finding the books they have wishlisted. Probably many of these books are less popular. Not offering points for inventory will mean that:
(1) less popular books won't be listed
(2) people with less popular books won't be able to mooch, so will leave BM, disillusioned.

We need eclectic inventories.
(a) Make them more visible by fixing the "recently added" function so that _EVERYTHING_ entered into BM inventories appears on this list, and give people the chance to find those gems.
(b) Improve the search and recommended functions to make those different books more accessible.
(c) Give users the chance to add their own topics to the database to improve search functions. Raw data may be imported from Amazon, but can't we as a community improve it?
(d) Sometimes books can sit on an inventory for years, then be suddenly mooched. Last year I sent out books that had been in my inventory for two years or more, but eventually someone found what they were looking for. If I had needed the space and had access to a charity shop to dump the books, I probably would have removed those books from my inventory.

If points earned for international mooching are reduced, then what is the incentive - other than being a nice person - to send books overseas, and particularly to a country where books abound?

Overall, leave points as they are. Encourage international mooching by adding a regional tier.

There may be many people sitting on unused points, but so what, they've earned them? I still don't understand why this is an issue. Surely what's important is to keep BM moving and make things move around more quickly. This could come from better search and recommendation - maybe then those points would be spent. Let's fix what is partially blocked and see whether that helps, rather than reinventing and breaking a perfectly excellent system.

I don't think the amount of points in the system is the main problem. The problem is that there's less books available. The statistics show decrease in amount of users and amount of books to mooch (probably due to world economy and high postage costs). Shouldn't we try to fix that before making any big changes to the point system?

My suggestions are:

More mooching
1) Let's all have "BM advertising campaign" to get new members. There's millions of booklovers who haven't heard about BM yet. (Write to other forums, distribute BM cards or leaflets, articles in magazines, book fairs,…)
2) Try to figure out ways to encourage adding more books to BM.
3) Improve BM search options to help people find more books to mooch and keep them active in BM.

Small changes to points, if necessary
4) Give 0.1 point only for adding 50 (or 20, or 100) first books. (Maybe keep +0.1 for highly wishlisted books.)
5) Give 0.1 point only for marking 50 (or something) first books received.

And please,
6) Keep the point system otherwise as it is. I believe like many others that changes would probably kill angel system and throw "small mooch countries" out from BM.

So, rather more books than less points.

I like the idea of encouraging multiple mooches by tweaking the way recommendations work. That might take a lot of work, but it would be really cool if you could get a recommendations system that is actually helpful. Perhaps, right after mooching a book from somebody, recommendations *from the inventory person they just mooched from* could pop up? I could see that encouraging multiple mooches very effectively, without stepping on any toes or changing anything in a system that is, after all, still working very smoothly (with no evidence that that is necessarily going to change). Right now, the recommendations on most book detail pages are worthless. It would be great if that could change.

The point discount for multiple mooches seems like a good idea in theory. But I can see three potential objections to it in practice:

1) People who really want to offer a discount for multiple mooches are already doing so; that makes it somewhat unnecessary.

2) Even though the discount would be intended as a reward, people who couldn't find multiple books from one person might see it as a punishment. This could actually lead to a *decrease* of single mooches: "I want this book! Oh, wait, none of those people who have it have other books that would interest me . . . mehhhh, I guess I'll pass altogether."

3) You'd probably see an increase of reserved books for friends. Probably not a huge deal (as someone is going to get that book either way), but worth considering.

Now, here are the upsides:

1) Encouraging an increase of BookMooch friends who trade piles of books with one another. This would encourage more social networking between members. Some people might not like this, but more people probably would.

2) This would be EXTREMELY helpful to international moochers who are dependent on Angels to get most of their books. This would help encourage more international mooching, which is a very strong upside, especially if you're considering changing the way international points work.

Overall, the point discount for multi-mooching seems like a great idea, as long as the sender continues to receive the same number of points as ever -- that way, the sender pays less postage money per point, and the receiver pays fewer points per book, which makes a lovely "win-win" situation. If you want to implement it, I would not object. I think it would definitely encourage more BookMooch friends who trade stacks of books to one another, and it would also do loads to help out people who are reliant on BookMooch Angels for a lot of their books.

As to the main thrust of your post, the three sources of "inflation":

1) I agree that adding books to one's inventory should be rewarded with 0.1 point each, for all of the reasons you mentioned. That encourages people to join in the first place, it gives new members something

As to the "virtual points" idea one person mentioned, I wouldn't worry much about it. You might have a spot under the points log that says how many points are there from adding books to inventory -- that could help people who are concerned about the "virtual points" thing, without being obtrusive for people who don't care about it. I think the mooch ratio works very well to prevent people from taking advantage of virtual points too much. I do think there could stand to be a system in place to red-flag people who are marking too many books lost -- but there don't seem to be too many people out there who are dishonest, and the mooch ratio helps block most of them, so I don't think it's an urgent problem.

2) I agree that we can do without the 0.1 point for marking books received. It's nice, but totally unnecessary; most people are going to mark books received no matter what, if only to declutter their "pending" page. If you think the system will work better without that, feel free to take it out. I agree that it's unnecessary.

3) Oh, please, please do not change the way the international points work. It's definitely an inflationary thing, but I've always thought the way you had those set up was perfect. It costs me three times as much to mail a book internationally as domestically -- and I live in the US. For people in a lot of other countries (such as, say, Australia), that's got to be even worse. Unless you want scads and scads of people suddenly switching to "only to my country," you need to keep that three points received. It's fair, accurate reimbursement. If you start decreasing that, it will no longer be.

And then there's the other side, increasing the number of points for mooching internationally. That would not affect how many people would be willing to send internationally, but it would DRASTICALLY affect how many people would be willing to mooch internationally. I have an Australian BookMooch friend who has complained many times how hard it is for her to get any points on BookMooch because most people in the US aren't willing to pay two points for one book (even though she has to pay two points for hers the majority of the time). If you raised that to three, a lot of US members would stop mooching internationally altogether. That would kill most of the potential requestors international people could get, which might kill their ability to trade sufficiently to keep their interest in the site alive. It would be a tragedy to see BookMooch popularity thus nosedive in other countries.

Oh, and one other thing: I noticed in one of your other BookMooch Health blog posts something about an idea to "nag" people to re-post books that are popular that they haven't reposted since getting after a certain amount of time. *Please* do not do this! One thing I love about BookMooch is that there are many different ways a person can choose to use it, and they are all valid. Some people treat BookMooch like a library; some primarily want to find new homes for their old books; others mooch books they want to keep. (Particularly people who don't have the income to get books to keep otherwise.) Those "nagging" e-mails would be judgemental and guilt-trippy to the last group of people (which, incidentally, includes all charities), and that would make their BookMooch experience unpleasant and hassle-y.

One thing I love about BookMooch is that I can try books I consider "risky" by mooching instead of checking out from a library. With a library, I have to worry about late fees and due dates and other such hassles. With BookMooch, I can mooch a book I want when it comes up, read it when I finally have the time, and keep it if I love it or pass it along to somebody else if I don't. That "keep it if I love it" part is important -- I tend to get attached to the exact copy of a book that I originally read, which makes it sad to fall in love with a book I checked out of the library. Even though I have to pay for postage, BookMooch fixes this perfectly. A system of guilt-tripping about those books I fall in love with and choose to keep would hurt and frustrate me.

. . . Okay, that was a really long post. Sorry about that. If I sound worried or overly critical, it's only because I love BookMooch so much, and I would hate to see anything change that would detract from the whole thing. Thank you very much, John, for caring so much about the system and working so hard to keep it working properly! Most countries would benefit immensely from gaining a caretaker as devoted as you.

People with more points than they can use (and there are a lot of them) are no longer adding books to their inventory because they have no incentive to do so, and are instead waiting for stuff from their wishlist to be offered. Enough people are doing this that you end up with an increasingly large number of users chasing after a shrinking number of books. It becomes very very easy to get your books mooched, and hard to find something you want.

Multi-mooching doesn't seem like much of a solution - if it's hard to find one book you want on the entire site, how likely are you to want 2 or more from the same member?

Changing the way points are allocated is a step in the right direction, but I'm not sure it's enough at this point. Whatever happens, there have to be INCENTIVES for people to start offering desirable books again, and I don't know that there are easy solutions right now.

Now this might be going a bit overboard, but what if you changed the points system so that you only get your mooch points after the recipient has left feedback? Obviously this would mean posting overseas may mean having to wait longer to recieve mooch points from your recipient, it also rely's on the recipient actually leaving feedback, and then there are issues with wether or not the you would still get the mooch points if the recipient leaves negative feedback. However, it would also mean that you wouldn't be able to spend your mooch points until you have actually earned them.

But, I would be happy to donate points to Bookmooch which people could then buy using Paypal.

This would mean that new moochers could get books more quickly and that Bookmooch would get more funds. Even seasoned moochers sometimes want more points at a particular point. This would also remove points from the system and turn them into funds.

For some of us, points are more viable to donate than money. I've spent a huge amount at the postoffice to earn these points - I've given 00s to charities, but to be honest the majority of the charities seem to have more points than they need.

Problem: The current points system is unbalanced. On average, bookmooch members build up too many points which ultimately makes the long-term bookmooch economy unsustainable.

Cause: Currently, each domestic mooch results in a net of +0.2 points into the economy. Each international mooch results in a net of +1.2 points into the economy.

Solution: Don’t add so many points into the economy from each transaction.

Suggestion:
Add a book to inventory: +0.1
Domestic mooch, sender: +0.9
Domestic mooch, moocher: -1.1
International mooch, sender: +2.9
International mooch, moocher: -2.1
Leave feedback: +0.1

Result: Each domestic mooch would result in a net of 0. Each international mooch would result in a net of +1 point. At a rate of 550,000 mooches per year, my suggestion would mean that 110,000 fewer points would be added into the economy each year (my suggestion compared with the current points system).

Benefits:
It’s simple. It doesn’t require re-programming the whole system. John would just need to go into the master program and change a couple of numbers (I think?).

It’s not that big a difference from the current system. Bookmooch members wouldn’t even feel the sting of slightly reduced point rewards.

The slightly reduced point system means that all members share equally (per mooch) in helping to maintain the health of the bookmooch economy.

Motivation is still in place for adding books to inventory, leaving feedback, and sending internationally.

In the future, these numbers could be slightly re-adjusted (down or up) as required to maintain a healthy bookmooch economy. For example, the +1 net for international mooches might still be a long-term problem.

Conclusion: It seems like most people (myself included) are happy with the current points system. My suggestion offers a slight tweaking of the current system in order to maintain long-term sustainability.

Disclaimer: This is just my opinion. Ultimately I trust John and the decisions he makes on behalf of the bookmooch community.

Not sure a mandated point reduction system would help this, and it would certainly outrage some members! Something that might encourage this would be a "Sale" tab - listing users who were offering incentives, 3/2 or whatever. This would make it voluntary. From the US - 600 pound gorilla, it is a big saving to send multiple books in one package to anywhere.

The .1 for marking a book received can probably go. Abusers will show up with a quick look at their Pending page and history. But not crediting points until the book is received would discourage well-intentioned new members along with the abusers.

A Recommendation feature looks like a good idea - Amazon certainly gets more of my business that way. BTW, adding the Amazon prices to the wishlist was brilliant!

Another thing I cautiously recommend would be an occasional newsletter sent to all users not on vacation; to update us on new features and maybe offer recommendations. Nothing too elaborate, but if users don't have a book mooched or a wish listed book come up, they never hear from BookMooch. You could also add links to the Wiki - I am convinced that many users won't send abroad just because they don't know how easy it is to do (again, from the US; don't know about other countries.)

John, thanks for all you do - BookMooch is truly unique and admirable in this commercial world!

Alternatively, members who already have a large number of points (50, 100, etc) do not need listing points or feedback points.

If you want to encourage international mooches, then set the mooch as 1 point and the sender gets 3 points.

However, I don't think points really need to change. The problem for me and many people is lower/stagnant income vs rising postage costs.

I have a lot of books to send out right now because I Angel flat-rate boxes for intl members and send media mail boxes to friends in the US.
Delay: The boxes are worthwhile when I can fill them. Some of the books would be $20+ as single intl packages.
Points: If I did not get the extra point for sending internationally, the boxes would effectively double in cost and be hard to justify. Likewise, if my intl moochers had to pay another extra point for their mooches, they would have to mooch less. This would hurt the Angel network and reduce mooches, not help your goal to raise them.

I am not mooching as many for myself because the available space for my own books is full. I need to read more, not mooch more, so I have more free space.

What might help is if there was a way to see if books in our inventories are on people's wishlists. I am clearing out my present inventory as they have been sitting for too long. Will be adding some new books, so it would be more helpful to Bookmooch if I knew which books were wanted.

Canadian postal rates are very high. The multiple mooch system would not work, our packages are measured and weighed- no flat rate. Other Canadians are refusing Canadian mooches.

Nods re people with long lists of books to send who tell people that it will be a year before a book can be sent. That is abuse of the system.

The search function is not useful unless you know the name of the book or author. I might mooch more if I could find books by genre, subject reliably.

(I don't now, honestly. CURSE YOU HOARDING TENDENCIES.)

Honestly, I don't think the points system is broken. I think some of the users hideously abuse the system - I have a number of books on my pending list that have been there for a year because people JUST WON'T SEND THEM - but that isn't something that can be fixed by the management, really. I quite like the points system the way it is.

Also, BM is the bestbook-trading site. I have tried 4-5 others over the last 3 yrs, and got rid of them, including Titletrader and paperbackswap.

Nor do I think giving extra pts for heavily wish-listed bks is a good thing, nor is limiting our wishlists. Mine is large (around550) due to looking for bks for my son, father& grandmother. My own wishes, like many others have said also, are a little obscure or old.

And the idea of being able to ask for extra pts for a popular book!!!!!!..well, one of the reasons I'm leaving Titletrader.

I, like others have stated already, am in a tight financial spot and am constrained in shipping, so I don't think the 15% drop is due to anything BM is doing, but just life happening.

Maybe you are unhappy with this but for some getting to the post office is difficult. I often leave work too late to catch the post office open. I have to use a rural post office that I pass on my way home which only opens part time. I choose to support this post office because if people like myself didn't it would be in danger of being closed. Recently we had terrible weather and a lot of snow in my area of the UK and I had to delay sending books as I didn't leave the house for over a week and the UK postal service was in disarray. I state any postal issues that I may have in my Bio which I regularly update. Occasionally I've delayed sending a book as I have already sent 5 or 6 that month. Not one person has ever cancelled a mooch on me because of any of these reasons. Maybe it's because they appreciate that this is a book swapping group and not a business!!!

I send out considerably more books than I mooch because I only mooch books that I cannot get at the library. I don't have space in my house for books that won't be re-read so I gladly recycle them to someone who will enjoy them. The vacation button is there for when I travel & can't send out books in a timely manner; one of those easy-to-use features.

2 things I'd love to see on Bookmooch: 1) an easily accessible "log off" button; 2) a way to merge my amazon wish list w/my Bookmooch wish list.

I figure the most expensive one I sent was $9-10 and that worked out to about $3 per point. anything less and it wouldn't have been worth it to me in return.

the 0.10 for marking a book received could go away and even the 0.10 for posting a book...well maybe after the first 10 or 20, that gives a new person a chance to mooch a book before one of theirs is requested.

2 words for you: "sea mail". Many international moochers would need to wait months before they could request books, if the points-on-receipt were implemented.

I just read over an article about e-books and I think I have the answer to my question. A lot of people are getting more books digitally these days and I am stuck with them. I found the answer to my question at this link
http://chronicle.com/article/Do-You-Like-Your-E-Reader-/65840/

I know that the question above seems irrelevant, but loving books has to lead to eventually getting digital books.
Maybe technology is changing the way people do things. Of course, the economy is a reason for people to cut back on shipping. I am just one of those people that thinks everything happens for a reason. And technology could be the reason for the cost of shipping increases over the past decade. And the cost of shipping could be the reason more people are looking at digital downloads. I have my own way of thinking about things like this. I think that technology is leading the way to change and the economy is one of the things that has to change with technology. That's just me and I am certainly no authority on economy and change.

My points seems to stay right around 50 these days, which I find a very comfortable level. I'm able to mooch anything that catches my fancy, and throw out smooches whenever I feel like it. The reason I don't mooch as much as I used to is that, as others have noted, I have an entire bookcase filled with books to be read, and I'm not finding as many of my wishlist books. And I'm working more, so I have less time to browse for books.

Reducing the number of points for international mooches would mean it would cost too much for me to send internationally, so I'd really be opposed to that change.

I could let go of the .1 for marking books received, but I have a point backlog; I fear that would discourage new members who don't have many points yet.

I have to say I think a lot of the problem right now is that people have less money and so are unable to mail books frequently, and also are unable to invest in second hand books just to list them on BM.

Thanks for all you do for BM, John!

I support the idea of limiting listing points to the first listed books.
However I would always give a bonus to people listing books present in wishlists. A very high bonus.
Or either, give the moocher 1 point is the book is not in wishlist, and 1.x if the book is in a wishlist. That could maybe help having more recent books (I see a lot of very old stuff on Italian users lists...)

Other thoughts.
Being from Italy, I strongly support the currents international scheme. I find difficult to have books from UK or USA since many people is not shipping internationally. Take away the bonus and much less will do it.

I find a very good idea multimooching: less cost, less oil-per-book consumed :)

I support also a splitting of the point(s) between "mooched" and "received". This would limit bad habits and allow people using surface international mail to have at least a part of their points immediately.

About listing 0.1 bonus, I like the limitation to the first xx books. The bonus is important only to beginners.
I also suggest hypothesis like:
- if a book is already present in 5+ (xx) copies, the bonus is not given.
- after 1 year of book inactivity the 0.1 point is taken back.
- if a book is present on a wishlist, the bonus is 0.2 (xx)

I find the charity a very good system to spend extra points, but I see a low number of charities available... Improve it could get rid of some points...

Finally, I found recently exceptional the Bookmoocher software, at least for Italy, where the number of listed new book is small. The possibility of looking at the new listed books without losing myself in the browsing is very good.

Anyway, thanks John for all you do!

I don't trade as much on BookMooch because wishlist books I really want don't come up much. I hate having a few points available and then waiting forever for something to come up. I almost always mooch from my wishlist and not from available books.

I can't afford to ship internationally but I don't think it would be a good idea to lessen the points you receive for sending a book because I hear it's expensive to send overseas. I've checked the online U.S.P.S. rates and to send a regular-sized (not too thick) paperback book to Europe would cost about $7.00 or more, three times the cost of mailing within the U.S. (based on the $2.38 media mail rate, one pound or less).

I see someone mentioned abuse of accounts such as too many lost books sent out. I had a request for a book and then it was cancelled in a day or two and the person had closed their account. He or she had more than 20 books lost that they had sent out. Something like that happened to me before when I ordered two books from someone, they said they were lost in the mail, and closed their account. Having 20 or more books lost seems to me extraordinary (the postal service really isn't that bad!) and that the sender might be claiming that the book was sent in order to get points when in reality the book wasn't ever mailed.

I agree with many other comments from Australians; it doesn't cost us less to send multiple books - but more, often a lot more, as we pay by weight and a different rate depending on the country it is being sent to, and parcel rates get put up by our postal service every 3 months. So I wouldn't want to get less points for sending internationally; which I do a lot.
It also costs us a lot more to send multiple books internationally and as previously mentioned, we now have a $9 surcharge for parcels of 500g (it was 453 as someone else mentioned but Australia Post said we're metric and argued for the change to 500g) or over to the US, that is on top of the $10+ or so to post, which makes the $ value of earning points much higher and would lead to me not send anything other than letter size books, if I got les points to send internationally.
I wouldn't worry about not geting points for listing books though; perhaps you can get this when you join (so you can take part in the bookmooch economy) but not after that?
I also agree that we don't need to get a point for acknowledging a mooch; it is just common courtesy to do so. However, it is nice to get it!
and I agree with "I do find it rude when people don't even write 'thank you' when they receive a book. Most are great, but a few spoil it." I've sent stuff by airmail at additional cost to myself, rather than sea mail, so the moocher go it in 1 week rather than 4 months and not even a thank-you.
Part of the reason bookmooching may have decreased could be the global economy, hikes in living costs and increases in postage costs. I use it less because less books come up that I want and I find it difficult to do general searches. I have also decreased my inventory as I can not afford to send as many books and hate to keep people waiting. I also strongly agree with those saying people with a large number of books to send, shouldn't be able to use all those points to mooch but only if they have a track record of not sending mooches or have never sent a mooch; so we can try to eliminate scammers. Having said that I'm not sure there is a fair, non-pnitive way to change that. The system is based on trust, and there will always be some people who chose to abuse that.
As for point snot being given until a book ie received; what happens if it is lost in the mail? It does genuinely happen on occassion? Or what happens when someone mooches a book and then becomes inactive before receiving it and/or marking it as received - this has happened to me several times.
As for wishlist versus inventory size - why does this matter at all?

I would not advocate any changes that would further limit the number of BMers willing to send internationally. (Although I, personally, will continue to send worldwide regardless). If the "point inflation" needs to be addressed I would be more willing to part with the feedback points and maybe limit the listing points to the first 100 (or 500 or whatever) books listed..

If it would make people happier to not get the point for books sent until they are marked received that makes no difference to me. (I think the restitution system for books marked lost makes sense but it is an uncommon enough event that it doesn't make a difference to me either way.)

Whatever is decided - I love BM and will continue to list my "orphans" here - thanks to everyone for participating!

I would be fine losing the .1 point for giving feedback

Changing when points are received to either when marked sent, or marked received would be fine, I see benefits any way it worked.

Don't change the ratio for international mooches - for me in the US, it does cost about 3 times as much to mail internationally as it does to mail domestically. The regional idea sounds interesting, several people in European countries have brought it up - and in the US, shipping to Canada is only slightly more expensive than shipping domestically, would work as the regional thing (I'd be ok getting a point less for shipping to canada than overseas.)

Like many others, I'm constrained by finances, and the current international mooch points systems keeps it reasonable for me to both ship and mooch internationally.

I like the multi-item incentive - at least within the US. From most comments it doesn't sound like that would be a good idea for international mooches. Could it be an in-country only thing? Its another financial reality here - sending 2 books domestically is sometimes the same price, and not more than $1 more than sending just 1 book. I make a point of looking through the inventory of someone I'm mooching from to see if they have anything else I might be interested in, and I do find it frustrating how rare I get more than single mooches from me - it is a lot more cost effective, domestically in the US anyway. Perhaps this could be a function that individuals could set as on or off?

I'm in 'ask me first' for international sending - in large part because I have several books in my inventory that I will not send internationally, they are large and heavy, I've priced one that I was asked about at $40 shipping - about 15 times the cost of sending an average book domestically. Its probably too complicated, but I would actually like to be able to list certain books as domestic mooch only, and have the rest of my inventory be worldwide.

It's just that simple.

Right now, that $2 or 3 in mailing is actually steep for me.

That's why there's no inventory at all in my account. I do put inventory up, but very little. I even check to make sure I'm putting up books that are on lots of lists, so they'll definitely be mooched, which they are, then I send them, and then it may be 2 months before I can put more inventory up.

It'll change, but not a lot, once I have a job. Because even after employment I'll be playing catch-up with old bills.

If the points for international shipping were decreased I wouldn't be able to ship from Sweden.

Thanks for all your work on a great book exchange service. Well done!

When sending internationally from the US, it is more economical to send multiple books, but from what you and other posters are saying, that may not be true in reverse.

If I send 12 oz. (large PB) to most of Europe or to Australia, it costs $9.04. For 24 oz. (2 books), it is $14.20, so the cost of sending 2 is about 1 1/2 times the cost of sending one. Sending to Canada costs $4.03 and $6.97. Sending Media Mail within the US, prices are $2.38 and $2.77 respectively. The cost for US users decreases substantially with multiple mooches, and never exceeds around $3/point. So US users benefit from multiple mooches - from anywhere.

How do your costs per point work out in Italy?

And I also agree with Jessica from Italy. I live in Portugal, everything I send is also air mail. So, multiple mooches...more exepensive, more so if they are overseas.
Gaining one extra point from international moches is what allows me to have more points and then, to request, so not having it would surely decrease even more my already few requests.

For the .1 for receiving...it's nice, but not necessary. I agree with many others that this would be fine to disappear. I also agree with the limit on .1 for listing. 100 sounds like a nice round number. After having listed 100 books, you should be fairly "settled" into the bookmooching world and the .1 isn't as big of a deal then.

I like the idea of a member above to have the multi-mooch as an option for members to turn on or off. I think that for the US, it's a great option, but in some other countries, as mentioned above, it just wouldn't work as well because of the differences in postage systems. Having it as optional allows people to give incentive to mooch multiple books from you, but only if you are willing to "sacrifice" a little of the points.

The Amazon price things was a good idea, but I do think that it is counter-intuitive. It discourages mooching in some ways. Like many of the books I have in my wishlist are quite inexpensive from Amazon. Why wouldn't I get them from Amazon instead of sending out my more expensive books in order to get a cheaper one? Not knowing prices I think was a good thing. I miss not seeing prices on my wishlist.

Well, that's most of my thoughts pertaining to the conversation. Can't wait to see what happens. :-)

I know you'll make a good decision, John. You seem to think things through quite well and that is why Bookmooch has been so successful so far. Thank you!

We are a small BM community and thus relying heavily on international mooches. Reduction of 3 points for this kind of mooch would be a letdown. However, reduction of points for multimooching is not a problem. Ok, that's all for now. Thanks John :)

I do think adjusting the point system to encourage multiple mooches from the same individuals would be a positive move however!

I recently acquired a whole pile of books to mooch/swap, but I have no reason to list them here right now, because I have a comfortable stash of points and almost never any wishlist hits to spend them on. And I very simply can't afford to mail books (especially overseas, I'm afraid) when there is little prospect of getting back a book I want in the foreseeable future.

So yes, ultimately, the only internal-to-BookMooch problem discussed here that affects my use is *what* books are now available. Otherwise, it's all about the real-world economy.

The only category where I think this is is unacceptable is with BMJournals, where there is a single copy only. However if the sender says "I can't send abroad until..." then there is still the option of getting the book angelled (unless the sender does not respond to such a suggestion as happened to me recently).

1] Elimination of received .1 point - GREAT idea
2] Elimination of posted .1 point after 100 (or other reasonable number) - Great
3] Adjusting international in any way - bad idea - multi orders to some countries are just plain too expensive with income down and shipping costs up. Over 4 pounds has to go priority mail which has just had a hike and is through the roof for those of us on a limited budget.

Please keep the amazon link - it is the best way to find books for wish list because the search on mooch is useless.

BIG please - a way to offer multiple points for books we really, really want. Most of my mooches have been when I get sick of getting no books at all and mooch to mooch something. I would gladly give 5 or 6 points to get come of my wish list books. Plus hubby is complaining about I am spending shipping and I really need to show him a book in the jewelry field along with an "I told you so"

You should also consider limiting the wishlist size somehow (i.e. related to the number of books he or she can mooch). The unlimited wishlist size also contributes to the problem of some having mooched more than given.

If wishlists were limited to the number of books one could mooch with the points available then I would have to hang onto points we are not going to use in order to keep multiple editions and journals for tracking on our wishlist. As it is we give points to charities whenever our surplus gets 'embarassing'.

Think the current pojnt system works well as it is and would not like the changes suggested.

I send a lot of my mooches abroad and welcome the 3 points as I also mooch (where I can) books from abroad. I also try to multi-mooch as much as I can from one member and do think that maybe the 'moocher' (ie"the requester) could possibly have a reduction of the 2 points used when a large quantity f books are mooched at one time. That said, I think the owner should receive the 3 points regardless.

I only list more books when I'm short on points and would hate it if this 0.1 point was not allocated. Do think that is unfair as by listing more books, it opens a wider choice of books for fellow members to mooch.

Also like the 0.01 awarded for marking a book received. If this was also to go, I believe folks would not be bothered about marking books as received.

Otherwise, great site and glad to be a member.

As for out of country sends, I would not decrease that reward. I understand that in the US the postal rates for international shipping are going up soon and since we no longer have "slow boat" rates, it usually costs about US$10 or more to send a book overseas.

I could go either way on the feedback. It's a nice perk but I wouldn't die without it.

Thanks for opening the discussion!

The goal should be to create a rough equilibrium. Some people have mooched far more than they have given or vice versa.

So I think that this new "points system" is really not a great idea and I'm sure it'll stop definitively Italian ---> abroad exchanges.

And mailing overseas myself, even if I mail surface, the cost is approximately 3 times that of mailing within the UK, so the "extra" point is what makes it feasible for me too.

The 0.1 for adding books I think should stay, but I'd be okay with losing the 0.1 for feedback.

Also I enjoy sending books internationally. I don't send hardcovers because they are much more expensive (I sent a book to the UK and postage cost more than the book actually cost), but if I have a book someone wants I usually try to send internationally as much as I can. I think that the points for sending to different countries should stay as they are, lessening them wouldn't be worth it for some of us. I mean if a book costs $8US I really don't want to send it for $11US if I am only gonna get one point. Maybe that's a little selfish but realistically the economy sucks and it is hard enough finding what everything I want from people willing to send it to me, why make it harder by changing the point system?

It seems most all of us who commented have high costs for sending out of country. So it almost seems those should get more rewarded? Maybe even doing something like every 10 books you send out of country you get an additional reward?

Maybe if there's also "membership drives" for countries that have few members. Those who refer new members in those countries who sign up could get bonus points. For example: February could be EU month - for each member you refer who signs up in EU, you get x amount of bonus points. Then March could be Australia month, etc. Although to make it really work, you'd almost have to wait to award the points until your referrals actually complete a mooch (send or receive) since the idea is to get new active members.

John

I really appreciate it when people do leave feedback for me as not everybody does. There are a few people who never acknowledge that a book was received. So I don't agree that this should be done without.

Regarding international mooches, I think the higher points received should stay that way. I have to spend more money to send internationally, I think thats worth getting more points for.

I think maybe people need some assistance in how to package books. They should not be put in a manila envelope. If the book moves in it's package, it will probably work it's way loose. If mailing more than 1 book together, it helps to use either a box or put plastic wrap around them so they move against each other and cause damage. There is much more, but many lost books are probably only ignorance. I worked at the post office for 16 years.

Date................Points/Member.......Books Listed/Member
2007.8.18_________ 3.6 ___________ 9.2
2008.8.18_________ 4.8 ___________ 6.1
2009.8.18_________ 5.2 ___________ 3.9
2010.8.18_________ 5.4 ___________ 2.4
2011.1.09_________ 5.5 ___________ 2.0

The current point system leads to an increase in average points per member because points are added to the economy each time someone mooches a book (+0.2 points per domestic mooch, +1.2 points per international mooch).

Probably, as people accumulate more points, their motivation to add books to their inventory decreases. If people had fewer points, they would probably be more motivated to add books to their inventory in order to generate some points.

This would seem to indicate that we need a point system that keeps the average points per member lower, thus motivating members to add books to their inventory and send books to other members in order to generate points.

Could inactive accounts be purged? I'm sure there is a percentage of books that are listed, but are not reasonably available because the account is inactive. There are also books showing as wishlisted, but the person who wanted them is not active.

I've bumped into a lot of people recently who are not sending books they have listed currently. I understand the financial reasons, but that also adds to the draw on available titles.

I currently have a LOT of points, and have not been able to mooch many titles because the ones I want are popular. So I have had very little incentive to post the books I have - many of which are on waiting lists. After reading this I posted a bunch of them. As we have more people (myself included) mooching for charities and taking books out of the BookMooch circulation, we may have to look at how much is coming in and how much is repeating.

In brief:

1. Leave point system as is - although would welcome reduction of points given if multi-mooch from same book owner.

2. Retain points for listing books and for leaving feedback. Some of us rely on these points to further mooch and it is a good incentive to remain active & keep refreshing with more books in stock.

3. Remove inactive members. Set a time limit of no activity to have account frozen and their inventory removed.

4. Limit requests made by members who have a certain amount of book pending to send.

5. I might suggest a 'reward' system for folks who are very active, send overseas, post quickly. Or, have fellow moochers recommend someone who could then become 'Moocher' of the week and be awarded more points and/or have their inventory highlighted on the home page/BM blog?

6. I also might suggest a 'bank' whereby those who are short on points may 'borrow' when they are low and 'pay them back' when in credit.

*

I have an inventory of over 500 books and 99% of the time send internationally and also within two days, where possible.

What irks me is that so many from the USA will not send overseas yet mooch internationally themselves. Also those who do not send books requested out for upwards of 4 months to a year. I have now decided to cancel mooches made to them as was taking far too long, but still do send books to those unwilling to send abroad.

If points are going to be reduced in the future, I may consider sending to the UK & Europe only. Postal prices have got very expensive and are due to increase from April 2011 from the UK. I do think that those willing to send internationally should get bonus points rather than less points.

Thanks.

Then the moocher can select that they are looking for an angel for a book - this would cost them a point. This could then feed a dynamic list available to all angels to peruse. The angel would get the point if they mooched the book which would make it point effective for an angel.

The mooch should show who you are angelling for - this makes it easier to reserve the book for the person when you receive it. I often have trouble remembering who I mooched a book for and have to search emails. If it was simpler for me (and I got the point it costs me to mooch) I would angel mooch more often.

The points per member and the books per member analyis is interesting. It would be nice to have the points per member broken down into those who will send internationally and those who do not.

I suspect that those of us who will send have more points than those who do not - basically because we have in effect "paid" for those points in postage.

i feel points should just be awarded via mooching. Ways to attract original moochers to add books to their inventories can be devised on less point based means. Other then that i still do think new members can be awarded with a point in order to start the ball rolling, but maybe some measures can be brought in to prevent people from signing up multiple fake accounts.

Pending sent points should not be automatically given before books are received, at least for new members without a certain amount of good feedback.

That's why they're not currently allowed for trade on BM.
Except for a very few minor digital imprints, anyone offering ebooks for trade would be basically breaching their given word, may possibly have needed to hack DRMs to even be able to do so, and can't offer any guarantee that you are the new sole and legitimate owner of the copy that's been sent to you.

I like the system the way it is. My decrease in mooching is due to three factors I don't think you can fix- a lot of the books I want are simply not available, I am behind on my reading, and my inventory is not in demand. I was much more active in the beginning as my high demand books were mooched immediately. Now things have slowed as quite frankly, my better books have been snatched up already. The initial points are part of what got me into the program! Perhaps if necessary, you could cap the initial freebees at 5 points, or only x number of points for listing inventory per month. I have never had more than 20 points hanging around at a time, so I do not understand how could anyone wind up with 200 points in reserve. When I have extra points I am more willing to squander them on a book I would not otherwise want, but part of my willingness is knowing I can get points for re-listing it when I am done with it.

I echo the sentiment against the sliding scale mooches. Rarely do I find more then two books I want from the same person, although I do look. Bundling more books together is more economical, but they are still heavier and it still costs more, so I would want 1 full point for each book I send.

I would not be against a yearly "tax" on long standing members to keep things going, or splitting the point received to .5 for marking it sent, .5 for it making it to its destination.

I have been vexed by abandoned or inactive accounts that have books I want- they keep coming up as available and it is cruel that I cannot have them! I think putting people on hold after 3 months of no activity at all, and having a way to report abuse of the system would help. Perhaps limit the number of mooches a new member can request until they have built up some positive feedback.

I think the most prudent course would be to not make any big changes to the points economy at first and start with incentive programs- perhaps extra points for speedy mailing and recruiting new members ( hopefully with higher demand books!), with a better recommending system. I have mooched a lot of books from the recently added widget that caught my eye, but were not on my wish list. Perhaps choose a few users or genre each week to "spotlight". This would get things moving a bit. Live journal has a spotlight sidebar that loads when you log in. They choose a few communities to promote and drum up a little traffic for something that has been overlooked.

It could be fun to have "biography month" or "fun trashy read month" and let people submit a book or two each from their inventory with a short teaser to entice moochers to try something new, and have it under "browse-> monthly highlights"

***I especially like the ability, at BookMooch, to list books that aren't acceptable to PBS's 'exacting book posting standards', books for which I clearly list the book condition (concluded mooches, condition statements copied from my book history):
ie:-book condition: "Good clean spine, 8.5 X 5.5 Trade pb...BUT the cat chewed bottom right cover corner...and removed a small (less than dime-sized) piece. (repaired...hardly noticeable)" .
..and this one-book condition: "Book pretty much ok, a few spine creases... EXCEPT: first half-a-doz pages...wrinkly in upper right edge area. (Possibly a past water splash) Different cover from that shown".
...and this one-book condition: "A well-read copy, spine creased, edge tattered. (cover now reinforced with clear wide tape) ...at some past occasion, book sustained some moisture to bottom spine/end page area, visible, affecting approx 1/3rd of the last third of pages...not affecting the book readablilty. Different cover from that shown".

I, too, since my original fairly early on posting, have read ALL posts (via email notification + logging in).

Previously in my original post I neglected to mention the, to me, supreme inportance of the INTERNATIONAL aspect of BookMooch, which makes it, usually, worthwhile dealing with the USA customs forms and the higher int'l mailing out-of-the-USA costs.

But I can reveal that after ONCE mailing a large hardcopy popular/highly wishlisted book out int'l...I won't be doing that again, lol. That mailing fee cost more than the original retail book price, for a used book that had been acquired 'for free'. sigh. And you may ask, 'why didn't I cancel the mooch?'...ah well...I do dislike cancelling mooches, made all in good faith, for any book that I've listed while my account is "yes" for international mailings. sigh-lesson learned re hc's...plus I'm continuing to weed-out the hc's in my inventory, giving such to local thrift stores.

IrishPenJen's (and many other folks') list of briefs (15Jan2011) is well-thought-out, and has prompted me to additionally comment.

RE: point#1: advantage + point adjustments for multi-mooches would only 'work' well for 'USA in USA' due to the USA Media Mail rate (fairly cheap/reasonable compared to the rest of the world, even 'tho USA'ers scream loud & long about mailing costs, constantly), as the entire rest of the mailing world seems to charge by gram/weight, so 'non-USA' (sending or receiving) multi-mooching ='s more books ='s more weight ='s higher mailing cost. imho...not good to even consider for the international aspect of BookMooch. I'm USA and do benefit from the multi-request mailings at another bookclub, PBS ... BUT ... PBS is USA ONLY.

IMHO, BookMooch can ride out the economic shift/wave without adjusting the points in any way that would cause folks to mooch/ship less, internationally.

* my pet peeves: the many inactive accounts + those 'few' that misuse the site. Yes...I'd love to see these things addressed. Even those folks that have "overly long acceptance/delay/mailing" fall under the catagory of 'buyer beware' and I've learned (ie:live and learn, lol) to read the bio notes FIRST and even peruse the feedback notes for clues about shipper tendiences and past performances.

* Helpful would be perhaps even more 'instruction' on successfully packaging for mailing --- and how to cope, for the newbie, of the overwhelming mooches that happen when new, WL'd books are posted, all at once...as beginners are wont to do.

...submitted, respectfully...
Lou B/justloux (USA:UT)

I would support getting rid of the 0.1 point for acknowledging receipt of a book. On the other hand, I think we should keep the 0.1 point for listing a book, for the reasons John listed.

Perhaps the multi-mooch option could be optional? If this is possible, I'd like to see an option for international and an option for within own country.

Please don't change the "get 3 for sending, mooch for 2" international system. It's difficult enough to find people willing to send internationally as it is, and that would make it more difficult. I would support donating points to a charity pool to enable international mooches without inflation, but I don't know if enough people would feel this way to make it work.

The idea of grouping countries into 'regions' to allow different settings and maybe different bonuses for 'regional international' and 'worldwide' makes a lot of sense, as that's broadly how the postal system works, at least here in the UK.

Thinking more generally about the service, I know I mooch much more freely when I have a reasonable balance of points than I did when I had say less than 10 points 'in hand', when it felt 'risky' to spend points on one book in case something I wanted more came along before I'd been able to re-stock my points.

I agree strongly with the people above who suggest some kind of 'holding pen' for points earned for having-had-books-mooched until either the books are marked as sent, or as received. (My pending page currently has 12 books that have been waiting to be sent out for between 12 and 5 months, despite several reminders - the only reason I haven't cancelled is that I *know* I won't remember who it was who'd listed those books and only end up re-applying for the mooch next time I do a wishlist trawl, so I'd rather at least know how long I've been waiting!)

I know I've mooched / listed less in the last year than in the year before, which is, I think, a combination of
a)few of my wishlisted books coming up, either at all or willing to ship to the UK
b) having already sent out much of my book backlog, so the listing is now a trickle rather than a backlog
c) less income and rising postage costs - my book budget as a whole has dropped, rather than the percentage of that dedicated too bookmooch.
d) getting an ebook reader, so I'm more likely to buy an ebook copy if available than mooch a paper copy (otoh, most books don't have a reasonably priced drm-free ebook available, and I have listed a few paper books I'd replaced with e copies, so maybe that's volume-neutral)

Of those factors, A and B are much the most significant.

For me, last year was economically difficult at times, and I imagine it was that way for a lot of bookmooch users. This decreased the number of new books listed, as the cost of postage does add up.

Addressing the 3 main points:

1: Definitely keep the point for listing 10 books. This is how I got started (how pretty much every bookmooch user gets started, I imagine), and without this initial incentive a lot of new users will have trouble.

2: I may be in the minority, but I think we should keep the .1 point incentive to leave feedback. It may be a minor thing, but it is a driving force behind the feedback system. I believe you would see a significant drop-off in Feedback reporting if people don't have some payback for doing it.

3: Please, do not mess with the international points ratio. Sending books out of the country is expensive, and the 3-points earned is the only thing that makes it feasible. I've sent quite a few books out of the USA over the last couple of years, and the cost is generally 3 times what a domestic shipment is, so it works well. If that gets cut at all, most people will stop shipping internationally, because it won't be cost effective.

Thank you for your time.

Martin T. Ingham
Maine's well-fed starving writer.

As always whenever I read one of your updates I really appreciate the thought and concern you put forward for your users. I really enjoy reading your updates and getting a chance to not only learn about the running of the website but also to have a say in the proposed changes.

Thank you so much John for all your hard work!

PS I'm very glad to see the comments offered do not include any nastiness or flames.

Jean Z in Dallas

But shipping, for instance, to Japan is more expensive. (And US Post does not allow for MediaMail shipping outside of the country.)

Also: John, you work so hard at this and you're a superstar. Thank you so much for all you do.

We got that:
Unofficial_Bank_of_BookMooch

I would also like to remind everyone that you can cancel an unresponsive mooch and select "the owner did not respond" to put the account on vacation. That should "hide" their inventory and remove the book from your wishlist.

On another note, I used to be much more active, but I've had less time to read lately, and thus, less motivation to mooch books and send them.

There may be some good reason for this, but I can't imagine what it is and I certainly wasn't warned about it. It seems exceedingly cruel to regular users to have installed the change retroactively too.

I don't understand why I'm to be penalised for mooching overseas, even if I could get someone to agree to send me something. I give 2 points for the mooch and my mooch ratio is increased by 3 books?? I can't even support those willing to send overseas by mooching from them because I will be hit with a penalty for doing so.

It seems to me a very strange and nonsensical thing to have done.

This has happened to at least one other moocher that I know.

I like it when people mooch several books from me, as I'm in the USA, it cuts way down on shipping even though I'm charged by weight. I have nothing in inventory right now as I'm waiting to have a number of books of a similiar ilk, so that when I list them, it is more likely for someone to mooch more than 1.

Maybe this comment is stupid. Hope someone else can give you a better idea.

I'm afraid you can't do this, it is against the TOS of Bookmooch, you can't ask for extra points for a book. You can offer to pay more books for a wishlist book you want. Others can offer to give you an extra point if they notice the book is bigger. You can ask for multi-mooch.