Books: LibraryThing and BookMooch (with a prize!)

[dorothean]

So, lots of us are having trouble uncluttering our books.

Now, I have about 900 books myself, so depending on the level of simplicity you're going for here you might not be interested in my advice, but I have thought about why I own every book I have, and there are several hundred for which I didn't have an adequate explanation that I don't have anymore.

There are two websites that have really helped me with this. I'm sure some of you know about them already but I thought a post about them wouldn't hurt.

LibraryThing. This is a site for cataloguing your books. You can enter them manually, search by ISBN for books that are new enough, or (for lots of books with ISBNs) use a barcode scanner. Once you've entered them, you can tag them (just like dreamwidth entries) and put them in different collections (for example, I have a collection of books that are actually on shelves in my apartment, and another for books that are in storage at my parents' house). You can also discuss books with other members, post reviews, and view interesting arrangements of statistics about your books and everybody's books. LibraryThing has contests (usually involving taking photographs of your books), an Early Reviewer program in which you can sign up to win ARCs in exchange for posting your review on LibraryThing, and a Secret Santa exchange (more on that at the end).

The reason LibraryThing has been good for my decluttering efforts is that cataloguing all my books (without a barcode scanner; yes, that required a lot of free time) forced me to look at each of them individually and think, at least for a few seconds, about why I still had it. When I tagged everything, I thought about it again. And then, since I started using LibraryThing as a way to list all the books I was reading, it was natural to use it as well to track my to-be-read monstrosity pile, and that led to further reconsideration and culling. I got rid of so many books.

LibraryThing is free until you catalogue more than 200 books. Then it's $10 per year or $25 for ever.

BookMooch. This is a site for swapping books. Upload a list of books you don't want (again by barcode search or by manual entry). People can search for books they do want, and if they want yours, they give you a point and you mail the book to them. It's very simple, but with lots of ways to ensure that everybody's happy with the transaction, from the ability to describe the condition of the book and state how long it will be before you can send it, to a quick but mandatory feedback step. I think the only major drawback is that it's a U.S.-based site, so that's where most of the books are, and a lot of people (including me) opt out of mailing books internationally because of the expense. There's a system in place to ameliorate this but I imagine it's still frustrating to non-U.S. members.

BookMooch is completely free, except for the postage of course.

BookMooch has helped me get rid of almost all of the books I didn't want that weren't extremely heavy or worth something at the used book store. I have sent away 359 books (!!!) since joining in 2007. (I would link to my profile, but it happens to use my real name.) Of course, this means that I could have acquired 359 new books ... but I haven't. Er, I've only acquired 125. (Some of which I then sent away again!) Anyway, I really recommend this site, especially if you are flush with mass market paperbacks (especially these ones) and can afford the postage. (If you're not sure, I recommend that you only list a few books at a time to avoid having to send a dozen off at once. Some people note in their profiles that they will only accept x number of mooches per month due to budget reasons.)

I know there are other book cataloguing sites, like GoodReads, and other book swapping sites, like PaperBack Swap, but I haven't used those.

Anyway! If you've made it down to the bottom of this post, you might be the sort of person who would enjoy having a lifetime membership to LibraryThing. Their Secret Santa (actually called SantaThing, of course) went horribly wrong in 2010 -- lots of the books got stuck in the mail during the winter snows. LibraryThing, imo, has been very proactive about listening to people's complaints and providing information about the problem, and is now doing various things to compensate, including giving out codes for lifetime memberships. So I have one. If you would like it, please comment and tell me your email address, preferably with some kind of ecstatic statement about how you can't wait to catalogue all of your books. If more than one person wants it, I'll do a random drawing over the weekend.

Comments

[jumpuphigh]

If someone doesn't want to catalog their books in the cloud, you can do it online with a free software program called Calibre which was developed for ebook management & conversion but also works great for cataloging a print library.

[dorothean]

Ooooh. I'd never seen that before. I've often wished (especially when I didn't have internet access at home) that I could download LibraryThing as an offline program. I must look into this.

[jumpuphigh]

And I meant offline. :)

If you go to the ebooks comm and click on the tag "calibre", there are discussions and instructions and tips there.

[rmc28]

I like LibraryThing very much and already have an account, so this isn't a plea for the membership, just an enthusiastic endorsement.

I started so it could count my to-read pile for me ;) Now I'm slowly working my way through the rest of our books: I like having separate collections for me, my husband and our child, even if some books are in multiple collections. I like the recommendation system, and that I can set it to only look at certain collections (i.e. my books, and books that I've read but no longer own). At the moment it is amusing me by recommending books I own but haven't catalogued yet, which does indicate it's pretty good at guessing what I'll like.

I also want to heartily second your recommendation of BookMooch, and to say I've found it really useful, both for decluttering and filling annoying gaps in my books. There are many books available in the UK, or from people willing to ship here. I use it less for giveaways since my very-local charity shop opened, but I've fallen into the habit of putting books I want on its wishlist rather than directly on Amazon.

[dorothean]

I'm glad to hear that it works well in the UK too!

[syntheid]

I actually use GoodReads, which I like more for keeping track of books I've read and books I want to read. (I sorta wish there was an option to mark how many times I've re-read it, because it would help me sort out which books really should be in my library to see that, probably.) It isn't really designed to be used as a personal library catalog, imo, though I have kinda tried to catalog books I own by setting up a shelf of "owned" books versus ones I just read, so depending on taste, it might work for that purpose as well. It's kind of more of a social networking book club setup, I think.

I've used BookMooch, which... if you don't have any issues with getting to the post office, can be great. I managed to get rid of about a dozen books through it in the past, but mailing things tends to be an issue for me, and I didn't really want to pick up new books, so I ended up donating some boxes to a local thrift store instead, this last round.

Another option is to think about releasing books through BookCrossing.

[dorothean]

mailing things tends to be an issue for me

There's that. I've been grateful for the 24-hour automatic postal dispenser many a time (for mental health and logistical reasons), but you can't get the (U.S.) media mail flat rate that way.

[dorothean]

Also, yeah, I wish LibraryThing would let you track re-reads better too. There's a field to mark when you stopped reading a book, but you can't put two dates in there, so some of the books I've re-read since beginning to keep my reading list on LT no longer show up in the right place when I display the chronological list.

[morwen_peredhil]

For rereads, on the edit book page, click the "(more)" link that's right after the date finished field, and it will give you another set of date started and finished fields.

[dorothean]

ZOMG THANK YOU.

[morwen_peredhil]

You're welcome!

[finch]

I used to use librarything but I didn't have the money for a paid account and I ran out of space to list books so I ended up switching to goodreads. I kind of miss librarything, tho, so I'd love a shot at that code. :) My email is starling.edge@gmail.com

[dorothean]

Noted!

I love your icon.

[dorothean]

Okay, you are the only person who's asked for a LibraryThing membership code, so it's yours! I'm emailing to to you now.

[sauscony]

I love LibraryThing and spend a lot of time on that site. It not only helped me organize my collection, but it helps me organize my TBR and actually read books instead of just letting them sit around.

BookMooch was fine until all of the changes and ownerfail, but now I don't use it at all because of the changes, the censorship, etc. Plus it just made my book piles bigger, rather than smaller. So now I don't recommend BM to anyone anymore, although I guess it would be better for new members who won't get punished for using the site in a way the owner no longer approves of.

I highly recommend PaperbackSwap to those in the U.S. and it has a lot more books to choose from than BM. The only problem I have with PBS is that they have condition requirements, so some of my books are unpostable there. PBS also has sister sites for swapping DVDs and CDs. The CD site is helping me tremendously with clearing out my late mom's CD collection.

[dorothean]

Would you mind explaining about problematic changes? I haven't followed anything like that apart from occasionally reading posts from the owner about surveys and distribution of point value. I wouldn't want to support a site that does anything harmful.

[dorothean]

Oh, sorry, I hadn't scrolled down to see your reply to luscious_purple. What do you mean about censorship, though?

[luscious_purple]

I personally like BookCrossing for "releasing books into the wild," though I haven't done a lot of that lately.

I have a Library Thing account and I add a few books to it per month. Depends how busy I am.

What's with the "censorship and ownerfail" at BookMooch? I haven't heard of that. Maybe I will look at PaperbackSwap....

[sauscony]

The owner of BookMooch changed one rule retroactively which pushed a lot of international moochers/senders to almost being at the ratio limit (BM has a ratio and you get cut off from being able to request books until you send more), which tied their money up in credits they might not be able to spend. Other rules were changed too. Some of the comments on the blog which criticized the changes or even just asked questions were deleted and the site and the owner have changed a lot, IMO, for the worst.

[mercurychaos]

I like Paperback Swap because when you put a book one your wishlist, you get put in a queue with everyone else who's wished for it, and when your turn comes up the book will be held for you for about three days so you can have the first pick. Bookmooch does send you e-mail notifications, but by the time I get around to reading my e-mail it seems like someone else has always gotten to it first by then.