Book Swapping Web Sites:
Not the Apocalypse
A presentation by John Buckman, CEO/Founder of BookMooch
<john@bookmooch.com>
http://slideshare.net/johnbuckman

john@bookmooch.com
http://slideshare.net/johnbuckman

Book swapping is...
People exchanging books between each other
“Bücher Austauschen”

How does it work?

Twenty companies
The largest:
BookCrossing
PaperbackSwap
BookMooch

Estimate:
Two million people
have tried book swapping

At least
20,000 books
are swapped
each day

Creating Incredible
Passion
for books

Bücherwald

BookMooch Angel Network

All Book Swap web
sites are
growing quickly
Typical: 50% growth
every 6 months

Google loves us

BookMooch - total number of swaps

800,000 in 2nd year
300,000 in 1st year
BookMooch - total number of swaps
1 year ago: 300,000 - now at 1.1 million

Business models
and
different approaches

BookCrossing:
- leave a book somewhere
- let someone else pick it up
- very soft sell
- very global

BookCrossing
makes money with:
- Pro membership

PaperbackSwap:
- paperback trading oriented
- hard sell
- special mailer
- DVDs and CDs too
- USA only

PaperbackSwap
makes money with:
- selling book points
- margin on postage

BookMooch:
- all kinds of books
- very soft-sell
- very global

BookMooch
makes money with:
- margin on Amazon sales
($40,000 in monthly Amazon book sales)

What does this mean for
publishers?

This is already fairly big, getting bigger.

Three trends increasing growth:

Social

Green

Cheap

Creates book lovers
and is a direct channel to them

Yes, books are traded for free
but many are purchased as well

A potential antidote to
Amazon’s power?

You know your business,
reach out to us.

Book Swapping Web Sites:
Not the Apocalypse
A presentation by John Buckman, CEO/Founder of BookMooch
<john@bookmooch.com>
http://slideshare.net/johnbuckman