Sunday 24 April 2011

BookCrossing - The site for booklovers who love to share!

Someone asked me to explain what BookCrossing is. Well where do I start.........

To me BookCrossing is a great site for book lovers who love to share, with persons known and unknown.
Their definition from the BookCrossing site is as follows:-

"Label. Share. Follow. Breath new life into books instead of letting your old favourites collect dust - pass them along to another reader. Our on-line archival and tracking system allows members to connect with other readers, journal and review literature and trade and follow their books as lives are changed through “reading and releasing”. Users are able to tag and track their individual books by marking them with BCIDs (BookCrossing Identity Numbers). Each BCID is unique to each book – once it’s registered on our site, the book can then be followed and journalled forever. BookCrossing is free to join and free to play. So don't be 'shelf'ish with your books - read and release!"


The aim of the site is to connect people through books.


For example, you can leave a pre-loved book on a park bench, or at a bus stop, or at a store, or anywhere else that takes your fancy. You leave a pre-printed note on it (from the website) telling the finder that this is not a lost book, but now theirs if they want it, to read and pass on..... They are encouraged to go to the site, where the book is registered (id number) and put they have found it. This then means that the book can be tracked around the world. This is known as a "Wild release". You can do the same by giving the book to someone you know, and again encourage them to log it on the site. This is a "controlled release".






It really is a great site. You can do a BookRing, where you send a book to one person, they send it to another and so on, until the book comes back to you. There are competitions, chat rooms and all sorts, so why don't you take a look. The site is popular all over the world. I have released a lot of books into the wild and it is so exciting to see where they end up. 


Click here to find out more.



When you sell a man a book, you don't sell him 12 ounces of paper and ink and glue - you sell him a whole new life.


3 comments:

  1. Great post. If you don't mind, I will update my post with this link to your site/post.

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  2. No problem at all Alexis. Thank you for spurring me on to write about it. I love BookCrossing and I'd love to see more people support it.

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  3. Great explanation. I agree, BookCrossing is great.

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