(no subject)

[tink.livejournal.com]

You guys, how come Somerville doesn't have like, a crazy active book crossing community? I was totally stunned that Kansas is beating Massachusetts by three times as many books at BookCrossing.com (maybe that's a predjudice I should examine...).

We're literate! We're good sharers! We should all be doing this. Register at bookcrossing.com and start sharing books with your neighbors. Please? It'll be fun.

Comments

[thespian.livejournal.com]

Because here we REALLY like to keep our books, unlike people who don't mind givin' 'em away!

[siderea]

Yeah, doesn't BookCrossing.com have something to do with relinquishing custody of books? Abandoning them on the seas of fate, alone, in the cruel, cruel world?

[cos]

A few years ago, Starbucks pulled out of a few countries where people drink lots of coffee, including IIRC Israel and Italy. Why? Because - and this is their official explanation - they couldn't get as much of a foothold in countries where there was already an established culture of coffee and cafes. Their success in the US is due to the fact that there wasn't, so they helped fill a vaccum. When you provide something people want but that isn't already in plentiful supply, you can become big; when you provide something people want but which is already established, it's a much different game.

It's not 100% deterministic like that, I know. But really, I would be more surprised if it went the other way. I would expect BookCrossing to be more successful in places where people want to share books but there isn't already an endemic book sharing culture, and less successful in places where people have already been doing it - in this case, online. That is, I expect the Boston area to have lots of little possibly-cross-connected enclaves, including mailing lists and web sites and old used book stores and college campuses and networks of friends and so on, such that there's much less "space" for BookCrossing to fill in.

[curiositykt.livejournal.com]

I used to do it, but no one ever registered one of the many books I left places.. except for one I left in London.