the Economics of BookMooch

I joined BookMooch on a whim while sitting on my butt at home over the holidays. It's a book-swap program where you mail books you have to people, and they mail you books they have.

It seemed like such a good idea at the time, as I had always wished my books would get more use than my once read-through. It also seemed like a cheaper (free) way to get books than buying them at the bookstore at $10-20 a pop.

Yesterday, I sent off my first batch of books, all three of them, to Illinois, Washington, and Florida. That's when I stopped to think about the actual economics of BookMooch, and no matter how I thought about it, I lost out.

Mailing the books cost me about $12: the Post Office charged me $1.39 + tax per envelope for the books, and I mailed them Media Rate (lower than First Class) at $2.31 each.

So basically, instead of allowing those three books to continue sitting on my shelf, I paid $12 to send them to complete strangers.

So you're probably asking, well, I get books sent to me too from others, right? Well, theoretically. Doing a quick search for five books I wanted to read, I found only one. Additionally, the whole site is based on a point system. You get a point for sending a book, and it charges you a point to request a book. So in the end, the cost of shipping a book is essentially what I pay to get the next book, provided that it's even available in the first place.

Compare that to Amazon: most paperbacks I can get ~$7, and if I order a few of them at a time, I get the free Super-Saver shipping. That's only $3 more than my shipping off my own books to BookMoochers. Not only do I have an infinite selection with Amazon, but I also get the books new with zero hassle on my part.

Ugh, I have three points from the three books I sent, so I will find three books to request if it kills me. After that, I am done with BookMooch.