There was a somewhat heated discussion about "junk books" recently in the comments to this blog entry: Followup 2: intl mooch ratio change

My own personal definition of a "junk book" is "a book that was listed on BM a long time ago, and never mooched." I don't make any judgements about "romance" being a "junk genre". For me, if someone else wants it, it's not junk. Junk is stuff that nobody wants.

I began thinking about things I could do to remove "junk books" from BM. One idea was perhaps to take the +0.1 point away if a book is not mooched in a year.

But... I realized I was getting ahead of myself.

I should rather ask "how many junk books are there really on BM?" Is this a real problem?

The best answer to that for me, would be by answering the question "how many books have been listed on BM for a long time and never mooched?".

Luckily, moocher Brett Tomlinson' extensive analysis answers this question. Here is his chart:

It looks to me like about 50% of books are less-than-one-year-old in BM, and about 75% are less-than-two-years-old.

Only 25% of the books on BM have been here over 2 years.

Most of the books on BM are recent, and are not considered junk, since they do get mooched.

Books added to inventory tend to get mooched, and there are lots of recently added books (50,000 in the past two months)

This makes the BM inventory of books look pretty healthy.

If there's a perception that there's a lot of junk on BM, it might simply be that BM is not very good at meeting people's expectations of what they might find (ie, it's not good at getting current best-sellers) and/or the browsing/recommendation system isn't satisfying people's book finding desires.

ps: does everyone know about their "personal recommendations" page (it's linked off your bio page)? Mine lists lots of interesting and moochable ideas: http://bookmooch.com/m/recommendations/buckman_ca/9999

pps: my apologies for all the recent blog entries! I'm just pretty jazzed up by all the interest in this topic.

-john

The "used book store phenomena" has been something I had assumed would happen and was happening at BM and "junk books" have been on my mind as a possible problem for a long time.

The "used book store phenomena" is that the best books are picked off each day, so what remains at the used book store is a greater percentage of junk books vs good books.

However, what I think is happening is that BM is large enough that what would normally be "junk" at a used book store, because they have a small local audience, isn't junk to BM users, since there are so many of us, with so many varied tastes and interests. Fantastic!

-john

Some books are just waiting for the right person to come along and mooch them.

I think the much larger problem is inactive accounts. People often change their email address and disappear from the site. They may have a small inventory, or they may be in another country and only send to that country. It is SO frustrating when you are searching for a book, and something comes up, only to find it's not moochable for any number of reasons.

I think it would benefit the site greatly to tighten the belt on inactive accounts. If someone has not logged into the site for three months, they should automatically be sent an email asking if they still want to use the site. A quick link takes them back to the site where they are logged back in and that 3 month clock is reset. A failure to reply within a week puts their account on vacation hold. That easy. If they ever come back to the site they are off vacation hold and there is no penalty to them.

There are lots of people that I have attempted to mooch a book from that I didn't really want, just to put their account on vacation hold. I never had a single one of them send the book to me.

This might decrease the book inventory slightly, but it would greatly increase user satisfaction with the site. The only true junk books in the system are the ones from MIA users that we tie up points attempting to mooch with little to no chance of actually receiving.

No apologies necessary, this is fascinating and hopefully will lead to a better and healthier Bookmooch in the long run. It's nice to know you haven't gotten tired of this little project you started yet;)

Or elimininating the listing .1 point for books over a certain threshold (10-20+ copies)?

Please don't auto-vacation inactive members. I have gotten books from "inactive" members, and am fine with cancelling after a week to vacation those that are truly inactive.

to me, bookmooch's greatest weakness is that it doesn't help you find books. you need to arrive knowing what you want. i think a lot of mooches are being left on the table simply because people aren't aware of them.

pandora for books? :)

In my opinion the biggest culprits contributing to the "junk" problem are not obscure or strange books, but rather fad books which have been printed in the millions in the past but now are mainly ignored. Mega-bestsellers from years ago are lying around everywhere and no one's interested.

I thought this might be the case too, so I ran the numbers.

The top 200 most listed books (ie, most number of copies) account for about 10,000 copies on BookMooch.

Since there are over 400,000 books on BM, this means that the top 200 most listed books account for just 2.5% of the total number of books on BM.

-j

Cheri

also agree with Mel above, in that I don't mind older books, on the contrary, I have more than once mooched books from the 60ies or so, that I found here when they weren't even available on ABE books, so I don't think these should be considered "junk" either.

I always try to find a balance of books that I think might be in demand and books that might be difficult to trade. I still like to keep some of those in my inventory, just in case someone wants them.

And yes, the browse function does make mooching extremly difficult. I have honestly never found a book through that. All books I have mooched or that are on my wishlist are books that I knew about and added by searching for the title, or are books I found on LT and added from there.

And I also agree that incative users are a huge problem. I have had a couple of frustrated moment recently looking for books and running into inactive accounts. This is especially annoying for books with lots of copies in the system, because it appears in fist sight that there is a good choice there, but actually fining a copy to mooch can be quite an adventure, because you have to find an active account among a sea of inactive ones.

And I really like infiniteletter's idea of a list of books that have been available for 2+ years. That would interesting to browse, might help people unearth buried treasures, and would certainly help folks who have "old" books they'd like to see mooched.

Sonia, I think it's better not to limit the number of copies of a book (any book) that can be listed. While those extra copies may not seem to add anything, they actually kind of do: potential moochers have such a huge number of choices to mooch from that they can easily pick somebody who has something else they want as well, thereby encouraging a new multi-mooch. :) Besides, it would be horrid if inactive users snatched up all those spaces, and you can bet that would start happening if we did set limits!

Karen, I don't think you need to worry about your theoretical situation; that's what mooch ratios are there to prevent, and they do so quite effectively. And inventory caps would be a terrible idea for quite a lot of superb BookMooch members who happen to have lots of books they want to offer to the community! A better solution, if this is a concern, would be to cap the total number of 0.1 points that one can earn for adding books to their inventory.

And yes, I have mailed out books that were in my inventory for 2+ years. Just mailed out two last week, actually, and to the same (international) person, no less! They were the only copies of their title in the system, and both went to somebody who has very little access to English language books in their country. So those two books, while "junk" to me for over three years, just became somebody else's treasure. Awesome. This is why I don't remove books unless they are not mooched for a long time AND oversupplied already. Every book deserves a chance of finding a home with somebody!

This months "best seller" can quickly become next months "old hat" and therefore a "junk book", but as long as there is another generation of book readers behind us, every book has the potential to come back into the limelight.

New members can suddenly change the status of a junk book. Suddenly a book that has been sat in somebody's inventory for ages is snapped up by a new member who has been looking for that book for ages.

In book terms I don't think "junk books" are a big deal, sooner or later somebody wants it. Its whether or not "junk books" have a negative impact on the function of bookmooch eg, does having 100 plus copies of one title listed on bookmooch serious detrimental affects on the speed/memory/data/usage of the site itself? Does having XXX number of single copies of obscure titles have a negative impact bookmooch? If not, leave the books alone. If they do... then something needs to be done.

If this is just about "I can't get hold of the books on my wishlist" (because its already in big demand), I personally believe that if you are that desperate to read it, you'll go out and buy it or have the patience to sit back and wait for it to start falling out of the limelight to becoming readily available. Bookmooch is like a second hand bookshop- its rare to get hold of a best seller, but if you are browsing for something to read without a specific title in mind, there is usually something available. Unfortunately the search facility at the moment isn't particularly efficient.

My biggest annoyance is that some of the older books don't have any information about what the book is about. All you have to go on is the title. In a second hand book shop you can look to the back cover for a synopsis, on bookmooch sometimes the only thing you have to go on is the title. If I don't already know what the book is about, I am reluctant to mooch a book just because its title sounds interesting. A book that sounds like an intersting thriller might turn out to be a seedy tale of romance... I hate romance stories! Anyway the point is that some of these obscure books have the potential to be mistaken for "junk books" simply because a synopsis isn't available for it.

And yes, chunnie, I agree that we could use more information about older books. I have the same problem all too frequently.

***

The mooch ratio does not stop this person having an inventory of 600 books for which they have received 60 listing points and spent every last one of them. They will continue to list large numbers of books, acquire and spend more listing points so once their ratio reaches it's limit they will owe a lot more than the 60 points they currently have in overdraft. Do you think they will stay around to send out books to redress that? I don't think so, I think they will just not bother any more or maybe they would just abandon that account and start a fresh one.

***

This angers me.

I am one of those with an inventory of nearly 600 books and am constantly uploading fresh stock, have condition notes included for all books (except some magazines listed), post out within two days of accepting mooch and am usually the only one who has a particular title listed. My inventory is NOT junk or popular titles. I offer a very mixed selection and throughly enjoy the BM experience and exchange.

I do NOT abuse the system nor ever intend to. I DO use all my points when I have them , I mostly multi-mooch and I accept most all mooches (bar the few I cannot locate). I also add in 'reviews' and more 'book content description' when I have the chance so folks know what the book etc is actually about.

What will decrease my activity is the future difficulty of mooching internationally and the reduction of points attributed; the removal of the 0.1 incentive for marking books as received and should there be a 'cap' on how many books can be listed plus if 0.1 is stopped for doing so.

Other constraints will of course be finance, rising postal rates (due to increase in the UK from April 2011) and a surplus of healthy books to mooch.

If anything, I think those who list large inventories should be commended and not damned.

I tend not to leave books on for a huge amount of time, but that is more to do with space here (and the books keep arriving - mother-in-law bequeathed a huge number to my husband and they aren't all in the house yet).

What really frosts me is when I request books, they are accepted, but the owner takes forever to mail them. I wonder if people are listing the books as they acquire them, then read them AFTER they have been requested. This problem might be fixed by giving deadlines (perhaps 7 days) and the owner forfeits the points if the transaction is not completed in a timely manner.

I really like BookMooch and hope it thrives. Frustration with people who are not responsible hurt it.

Find a way to get rid of the inventories of people who have been inactive for a period of time, whatever that may be. I bet that would clear up some of those books older than 2 years in the inventories.

I agree with chunni that books with no descriptions won't get mooched as readily as those that do. When I check out someone's inventory and there's no description for a book, I'm much less likely to mooch it.

You never know when a book will strike someone's fancy or someone will find a new author and want older books. I've just gotten interested in some authors whose books are older and hope I can find some on BM. So I hope older books will be on the site.

And I like the idea of a list of books which have been on there for a while. Would be interesting to see and I bet some would go. We are an eclectic group, aren't we?

Other, even old, books get mooched although it might take some time, or if they don't and if it's an active account the member will remove them after a while. Only books in inactive accounts sit around if that account is not set to vacation, so if there were a way to sort these, the books will be gone too.
I'd suggest sending the owner of an account that hasn't been logged into for a year an automatic email telling them to log back in into their account or it'll be set on vacation automatically (but that they'll continue to receive WL notifications) and also suggesting to update their inventory.

Kevin O
Thousand Oaks, CA

I agree with the above. Deleting inactive accounts to get rid of some of the books never mooched/looks available would be great.

This absolutely happens now and has for years.

Whenever an account goes on vacation, all their books are removed from their inventory.

An account is "put" on vacation if someone mooches a book from them, the person doesn't respond, and the moocher cancels after waiting more than 2 weeks. This system has been in place for years and seems to work well.

-john

The only thing I can see that could be useful would be some kind of measure of how likely you are to get a book mooched. Something based on the frequency with which it's offered, the time before it's mooched, whether it is/has been wishlisted, that sort of thing. I say that because sometimes I've found out a whole stack of books to get rid of that I don't have space to keep and I like to check BM first to see if they're wishlisted or otherwise in demand because then I'm happy to list them and send them out, but if other copies haven't moved then I'd like to know so I can get rid of them.

Thanks!

C

I've used BM to literally replace a good 2/3 of my personal library with what I thought were "junk" books with books I now hold with value. Yet, a very large portion of the books I put up were mooched within seven days.

I've done a fair bit of browsing on BM to see what is available and I have yet to find a junk book.

I have had books listed a long time mooched by somebody who really really wanted them. And a few books I want but can not mooch (not without asking an angel, and it´s not that high a priority) seem to have been listed a longtime.

There is one essential difference in regards a normal used bookstore, which is bookmooch is much larger, so there is a much larger audience of interests and tastes to browse. Say you got a book on an obscure topic, on a normal bookstore it might sit there forever. Here it´s much easier to be found by somebody interested on that topic.

Just this week, I asked someone to Angel a book for me from someone in another country. That person hadn't been on for 500 days, but logged in and accepted the mooch.

I also cancelled 2 mooches that hadn't been accepted in a month from 2 members.

> I began thinking about things I could do to remove "junk books" from BM.

Cue the histrionics.

Did you perhaps mean hold down the multiplication of junk books?

As long as I can continue to have "junk" books in my inventory, I don't see a problem. So, after a couple of years they no longer count as 0.1 point. I can live with that as long as there's no interference in my ability to trade them as usual when someone does eventually mooch them.

I'm not sure your proposed solution sufficiently addresses whatever problem you're perceiving, though. There are the books that are rarely wanted (ye olde browsing function debates). But as at least one person pointed out here, there are also books for which there is far more supply than demand, more copies of which get added to inventories every day. "Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood" anyone? Anyone?

Lately I've been suspecting I'm the only person who knows about it. I keep telling people about it but it just doesn't seem to "stick". In fact in the last two weeks I've seen two people suggest that BookMooch add one. ??!

When I go to Sheppherd's Book Sale every year, a book with a lot of damage does go for less money than a better book with the exact date and title.

There is also the problem that accounts that are "temporarily on hold" still have their books show up in search results, yet you cannot mooch them!

The "auto-vacation" I proposed would not _automatically_ vacation anyone. It would send them an email after 3 months of failure to log in to the site, similar to a mooch request. If they failed to respond to that then they would be put on vacation. If they fail to respond to that, you can assume there is about a 99% chance they would also fail to respond to your mooch request, so I am not sure why anyone would think the current system is better :/

Another problem with inactive accounts is their wishlists. There are inactive accounts with 0 books in their inventory, meaning none of us can vacation them (nor should we the users be responsible for this...) but their wishlists are still active. Well the problem is they never log in to claim any wishlist books. SO when it is time to list a book, I see that three people have it wishlisted. Yay! Only all three people are inactive and no one ever requests my book. Boo :( I think most of us have probably had that experience...

Under the pull down menu on your inventory you can select "settings" and change what book details are visible, including date added. In the same pull down menu is the option to search your inventory. This option is available from any inventory.

As others have mentioned, instead remove inactive accounts (or somehow automate the "vacation" process). For example, if someone has not logged on for say, 60 days, automatically put them on vacation. Then perhaps limit the vacation -- if it is over 6 months, then perhaps remove them? I think you could give them a "warning system" -- automated emails reminding to log in when the account gets close to being deactivated or has been put on vacation.

I know life gets in the way but being part of the community requires you to mooch and send books, so keeping an inactive account on forever just inflates the point system and shows books that can't be mooched because the account owner isn't active anymore.

I like that you are getting our feedback. Thanks for doing that!

I didn't know about this feature; can't seem to find it myself....how do I get there?

Thanks!

Just an automation of the vacation process is what we need, with notification to the user so that they can respond and prevent their account from going on vacation.

Being put on vacation prematurely by an impatient user is pretty annoying, I had it happen once, but fortunately it's easy to remedy.

Mailing deadlines? No, I don't want them, but people to send when they have agreed to or at the very least respond to mails asking why they have not sent, YES! With journalling this is particularly important. I came across a BMjournal that had been on Bookmooch for 4 years the other day and only 4 moochers had made entries in it!

As for removing books that stick, I had a book for sale on Amazon for 4 years and then it was bought by the great-nephew of the author who had been looking for a copy for years! Most of my inventory falls in that category.

I just did a random check in my wishlist. I have one book that is around 10 million on the list, And it's an old computer book too;) So please, post old, obscure books. After the international point change that's about all I'll be mooching!

I'd like to exclude what I give and have recommendations based on what I mooch.

I also agree with the stance on not deleting books that have been in the system over a year or even two years. I recently had 5 books posted over two years ago get swapped out on another swap site and on BookMooch in the past month I have had at least 4 books mooched that have been posted over a year or two.

I think it all depends on that 'right' person coming along. I am constantly discovering a new author and then I come to BM to look for their older books.

Thanks,
Jill

Inactive users and those who "game" the system are real issues, IMHO.

Have you read The Long Tail by Chris Anderson? Your chart from above resembles the power law that Anderson talks about drives the long-tail market. He pulls heavily from the 80/20 rule. I don't think the books that have been in inventories for longer than 2 years is a problem at all; Bookmooch is a long-tail market and interest in books isn't limited solely to wishlists.

Would be interested in talking more about this if you are.

--Ashley

I have a lot of books in my Inventory that have been there since I joined in 2006. They are hardbacks from the 1940-1960s. They aren't particularly popular, and they certainly don't move fast. But for 99.9% of them, they are the ONLY copy of that title in the system. And while as I said, they don't move fast, they DO move eventually, as people go looking for books for their parents or grandparents or whatnot and are delighted to find copies of books they never thought they would see.

Books that have been here a long time, but are the only (or one of few) copies available aren't a problem for a book mooching site.

Having 50+ copies of the same book is far more "junk", in my opinion.

~Aramada

Is the system set up so that it causes a real deficit to remove them when they dont move, after a long, long time?
I'm just sayin'...

(Oh WHY DO I Do It?) haha
Tikay

Funny, I just had a mooch request for that very book last week, and mailed it today! Don't forget that even 100 copies of a book won't help someone who wants that book if they are all "my country only"--and members in non-English speaking countries, without access to English books in libraries or used book stores or free Amazon shipping are exactly the ones who may be looking for one of these books. Such a book may not have been mooched earlier for several reasons (new members, new interests of an old member.)And we international members need the mooch traffic in BOTH directions. Our *supply* is limited enough already!

In Kona we had a free box at the local health food store, things did not stay there long...people always came along and took them because they could SEE them, touch and examine them...that's all I am saying.
Sometimes a person only reads a book after they have held it in their hands. Let's get these books into peoples hands. Some books turn people lives around.
Others just bring happiness...to readers who LoVe them.
;~})

Similarly, if a title has been around a year it would be nice to be able to mooch it for less than a point; sort of like shopping the clearance cart/shelf at the used book store.

And not everyone on vacation is "put" there by BM. When I'm not going to be near a comp for awhile , I put myself on vacation just so there won't be frustrated moochers cause I'm not immediatelt responding.

At the same time, YES, inactive accts of over 1oo days is EXTREMELY annoying when the only listing of a bk I want is theirs. And as far as the "junk books" comment goes, some of my wishlist books were published 100 yrs ago. If one of them showed up on BM, I would be ESTATIC!

This is supposed to be a site of READERS, no book is truly a piece of junk, it just needs to find the right home.

I find browsing here to be near impossible. The topics under the "Browse" feature are too general and then when I try to search within it gets worse. Just now I ran a number of searches for travel memoir type books using a variety of terms. Most of the books that came up were novels, even when I started with non-fiction! The only way I can find books here is if I already KNOW them by title, author or ISBN.. A better functioning Browse/Search feature would have me ordering far more books. I can't order what I don't see.

I am reasonably new to BM, but I love it and am constantly telling people about the site. I love the fact that I can look for older books from what might be a "new" author to me. (I have this OCD thing about reading an authors books in the order they were written:)). BM has been a godsend for me!!

And I don't see anyway to avoid that. These are former bestsellers that people are eager to get rid of, which is why every thrift store out there has a bazillion copies on their shelves that they can't even give away.

The solution to more book variety is simple: more BookMooch members. Encourage your friends to join, pass out the bookmarks with advertising, etc, etc.

The reason I almost always find the book I'm looking for over at Paperback Swap and not at BM is because I believe they have more members. But PBS won't accept advanced copies for trade (one of the things that makes BM fantastic).

More members....we need more members! :)

Michele J.

Becca's idea I've copied here is by far my favorite. I think it addresses the issue quite nicely and would take the "responsibility" from those who are mooching to have to mooch, to then decline, to put someone on vacation. I agree it shouldn't be something that we who are mooching should have to do.

Or: maybe set up a place the we can send a "think this person is inactive" email to have the admins check it out? Still alot of work for us moochers but far better than having to mooch, delete and thus lose our spot on the wishlist list.

infiniteletters' idea of deleting the .1 point for books listed that already have 20+ copies is a great one. I don't want them to stop being listed as I do multiple mooches sometimes and knowing someone has a book that has 20+ copies listed makes my job easier in choosing who to mooch that book from. Why not reward the first 20 people with that .1 point and those who still wish to list it can with the knowledge there is no .1 point for listing it?

As for books that have been listed longer than 2yrs: I really do not want them to disappear as I am constantly discovering books that are new to me that I never knew existed. As my world expands so do my book choices and having them deleted does no one a service.

Cara - I couldn't find anything in "settings" that let me see when I added the book to my inventory. Even clicking on "details" didn't provide me with that information. Knowing when a book was added would be desirable. What am I missing?

Um, "bio page"? What's that?

Searching the comments, I see that the recommendations actually are a link on the "Browse" page. John, maybe you could edit your post to say so.

As for books printed 15-20 years ago, I'd love to see a list of them, also. I don't have any specific books I'm looking for. When I go to spend my points, I just browse to see what's available and what looks interesting.

Is there any way for us members to find out which books have been here the longest?

Personally, I'd like to take a look at them. There could be something there that I might want.

I'm often guilty of going inactive - I work 4 part time jobs and travel a lot, and even when I'm home, sometimes I'm just too exhausted to respond in a timely manner. And then I feel guilty WEEKS later when I haven't, so I just keep avoiding :/ I like the current auto-vacation system, because it absolves me from a lot of that stupid guilt.

I agree that one of the nice things about BM is that we can post advance reader copies. I usually keep mine until I need points, but I'm going to post all of mine today, and I challenge all of us to do this on a regular basis. With newer stuff, we can attract more participants!