Farewell

After 13 years and hundreds of books given and mooched, I'm closing my BoochMooch account. It was fun for a while once upon a time but hasn't served any positive purpose for me in a few years. I think it is just something whose time has come and gone. To all who remain on the site, best wishes and happy reading.

I might be right behind you! I have received a book or two in the last few years, but nothing like it used to be. He killed it when he started worrying about how many points we were getting from overseas mooches and how many we were accumulating. Sad.

I stopped when US book moochers would not send books to Canada. Also I found fewer choices for me. When I first joined I was able to access many titles on my wish list.

I've been thinking about it too. I haven't been out there in who knows how long. Maybe I'll go through my lists and then print out what I'm still interested in first. I took my inventory off because I couldn't see accumulating points I couldn't use.

>4 dudes22: I did something like that too. I added everything from my wishlist that I still really want to my Thriftbooks wishlist, then I pick them up when a used copy is available for around the same $ I would spend on medial mail shipping. It just means the ones I've read are piling up with nowhere to go. I tried adding them to my bookmooch inventory but it no longer seems able to find most ISBNs.

When international mooching became more difficult, I decided to use up my points and then quit, but I cannot even use up my remaining points.... So I'm just leaving my account open with some wishlist notifications.
I've switched to Bookcrossing to get rid of the books I don't want to keep anymore.

I'm passing on book locally: little free libraries when I see one, Friends of the Library bookstore, charity thrift shops. I do miss knowing that books are going some place they are wanted. When donating locally, I never know if they end up read or recycled. But I'm not interested in spending the extra $ and time rehoming books via BookMooch just to acquire points I won't use. I no longer want to mooch.

I’ve been wondering how they are generating any revenue since Amazon has cut them off as a search source.

I just came across this thread and I haven't been thinking about leaving. I use BookMooch (and PBS) to send the books I no longer want to people who want them, so I have a big accumulation of points on both sites, but especially BookMooch. I haven't even kept up my wishlists very seriously because so many of the books I want are the academic kind that people don't give away very often; I suppose I should try using some of my points, since my desire to put my books in other people's hands is costing me money. Even Media Mail keeps getting more and more expensive, and now anything that weighs more than 10 ounces has to be brought to the post office. I've essentially stopped sending books overseas because the cost has become prohibitive.

For what it's worth . . . the "over 13-oz has to be brought to the PO" rule only applies to mail with stamps. If you use prepaid, print-it-yourself-at-home mailing labels, you can drop the package or padded envelope in a collection box.

If you have (or are willing to create) a PayPal account, you can use their (unpublicized, but super easy-to-use) shipping function: https://www.paypal.com/ShipNow . . . I've used it for hundreds of books, and never had an issue.

USPS itself also lets you create prepaid labels on their website, but there was a time years ago when it didn't play well with Safari, so I shifted to PayPal and never felt the need to go back.

>10 ABVR: Yes, ABVR, I just discovered this. As far as I could tell, the USPS website only allows you to print labels for Priority Mail and Priority Mail Express, but somebody suggested a site called Pirate Ship which apparently works in conjunction with USPS and at least looking at the site, allows you to print mailing labels of any type. I haven't tried to use it yet because was not sure it would be OK with USPS, but if you say it works with the PayPal label I will try it with Pirate Ship on the next over-10-oz book that is requested from me. If it works, that would make my life so much simpler! I've been hesitating to list "heavy" books for a long time because of having to get to the Post Office.

>11 mirigall: Paypal's shipping service works pretty well too. It's really a personal preference. The bonus from Pirateship is really their rates for priority mail, not much on media mail.

Regarding the USPS blue bins though, I find that a lot of thicker books won't fit through. It might be a regional thing, but our USPS has seriously restricted the collection boxes's opening. I can't fit anything thicker than 1" through it. It seems like they are trying hard to limit the collection box to letters only.

If your USPS blue bins don't have that problem, it should be safer than leaving your books in your own mail box for pick up.

>12 meat: There is always great concern with people placing non-mail items in collection boxes. Diapers, trash, soft drinks are commonly found items. USPS also has to worry about people placing bombs in collection boxes, which is why so many of them have disappeared from the streets.