John Buckman is one of my favorite people. For over a year now I have been a member of and passionately promoted his website called BookMooch. BookMooch is an online book swapping community where you list books you want to give away to gain points to mooch books you want from other members. You earn more points from members who mooch books from you. The only expense is the cost to ship your own mooched books. To date, I have given away almost 80 books on BookMooch and received 62 other books I wanted to read.
In February 2008, John blogged about an experiment he was going to attempt with his author friend Ramsay Wood. Ramsay is the author of a book called A Cat May Look at a King that is out of print. He and John were going to self-publish the book and list copies on BookMooch to be given away to readers. If moochers liked the book, they would “tip” the author through PayPal. They would then list the book on BookMooch again to be passed on to another reader. Or moochers can choose to keep the book and pay the full amount of the book’s cost. Or, if you can’t afford it or don’t like the book, you simply list it on BookMooch again to be passed on to another reader.
Yesterday, John announced the launch of the Experiment in Generosity. 24 copies of the book were listed by John on BookMooch and have now all been mooched. Ramsay’s book has also been added to 45 BookMooch wishlists, including my own. 
Here are John’s goals for this project, as stated in his blog post from yesterday:
- Can authors make a little bit of money by giving away a bunch of books through BookMooch’s system? A lot of authors look somewhat dubiously on mooching, since they’re starving already, and so I’d like to see if there isn’t a way to help them.
- Is there decent money to be made for an author by intentionally encouraging their books to be passed from hand to hand? Currently, they only make money on the “first sale” and thus the publishing industry looks upon recycling/reuse as a loss of revenues, which pits them against ecological concerns.
- Is the “moochers social network” a way for an author to market a book? Instead of selling your soul to a publishing company, can the recommendations and networking that happen naturally on BookMooch cause a book to interest people, get them reading it and maybe even drum up some revenue for the author?
- I am particularly interested in self-publishing, as I run the music site Magnatune where musicians self-publish (thus retaining their rights) and make a little bit of money. Is there a similar model possible with books?
I love the idea of a self-published author being able to reap rewards beyond the first initial sale of a copy of their 
book, and I’m not just talking about the money they earn from readers who donate. This is an excellent opportunity for authors to be able to grow their audience and fan base just from the actions of their readers alone. In my eyes, it’s genius. Also, it adds value to the physical book itself. Self-published books often carry an extremely high price tag and the author earns a very small royalty from each sale. Not only does this program make these books more affordable (and even free) to more readers, but the author has the chance to earn a higher royalty even if just one single reader tipped them half the list price of the book itself. If three readers did this, the cost of the book is covered and the author has made money. But hopefully it doesn’t stop there. It’s like a chain letter for books that pays off for authors and readers!
John states, “The goal with all this is to have a short “How Authors can use BookMooch” how-to guide, so that this idea can be repeated over and over again, with increasing success.” I for one will be looking forward to a chance to sign up!
If you aren’t a member already, check out BookMooch today. If you have books to give away and would like to earn free books in return, sign up and join the humble and happy BookMooching community! And kudos to John and Ramsay for starting this amazing marketing opportunity for authors! I look forward to reading about and joining in its success!
