New BookMooch Alternative

Hello everyone,

I'm a long time BookMooch member (http://bookmooch.com/m/bio/gerdemb) and lurker on the LibraryThing forum, but this is my first post. Unfortunately, for various reasons that have all been discussed before on this forum, I have gradually stopped using the BM site. Since I loved the BM concept and found no viable alternative, I decided to create my own site: Chango Books http://www.changobooks.com.

The idea of Chango Books is the same as BM with users around the world trading books for free and earning points, but I've made a few improvements:

More flexible points. The number of points for a book is not fixed. You can offer each book for the number of points you want. Earn more points for your expensive hard cover textbook or less for a cheap romance paperback.
Flexibility when mailing internationally. You can choose on a book-by-book basis which books you are willing to mail internationally and a different number of points than mailing domestically.
Books in your wishlist are automatically reserved for you. Whomever has been waiting the longest gets the first chance to request a new book.

The site is just getting started and so far we only have a couple hundred users who have listed a couple hundred books, but I hope that we can keep growing. I don't want the “mooching” concept to die.

Anyway, this is my first big website, so please let me know what you think about the site, the concept etc. I have lots of ideas for improvements, but I'd love to hear what everyone else thinks too.

Happy Trading,
Ben

Chango Books
www.changobooks.com
Trade your old books into new ones for free

OK I'll give it a try and add a few books...

Some suggestions...
- Make condition notes mandatory
- Wishlist importation?
- Decide how you want to deal with books with no ISBN, right now the system doesn't appear to be able to handle them.
- Ability to delete multiple books from your inventory and wishlist using checkboxes.

Also:

- A way to browse available books by genre
- A way to search available books
- A way to search available books by location

Also:
- A way to browse members
- A way to view listings in summary view instead of only a few per page

4> You can't browse by genre, but "science fiction" works as a subject...

I'll have to look around tonight for books to post that I don't intend to put on BookMooch. Right now I've just added the one book, and my greed got the better of me--I asked 2 points for the book.

#4 & 5 Seconding a way to search available books and a way to browse members. I've added a couple of books.

Created an account, but currently unusable with search that can't be restricted to moochable books only.

An ability to fine-tune postal zones might be complicated to set up but interesting, USA people would probably send preferentially/cheaper to CA/MX, same for many people in the EU & other countries that also belong to it or lay close to it.

I checked it out, but I'm not going to create an account and start listing books when I can't find any books. The search really needs a way to search *available* books. I didn't realize, and searched "Bathory" and tons of books came up, and those are RARE books, I knew there was no way the site had all those available!

>8 Heather19: I agree. I took a look and it looks great, but with no way of searching for available books, particularly books that are available to be mailed to Canada, it is just frustrating.

First of all, thanks to everyone who took the time to check out the site and left feedback. I'm just getting started and obviously there is lots to improve, but I'm glad to hear from people that are interested. I've token note of everyone's suggestions and I'm planning to keep updating the site.

It sounds like the biggest request is a better search mechanism for available books. Currently, the search shows all books with a check-mark below ones that are available. Unfortunately, since the site is just getting started, there still aren't very many books available. It is also possible to browse through the list of available books, but obviously this isn't very convenient or scalable as the site gets bigger. There are some technical issues that make searching for available books complicated, but I am thinking of solutions.

Finally, I'd also like to hear what people think of the concept of the site and the idea of flexible points.

Also congratulations to user iwillrejoice http://www.changobooks.com/user/358/ who made the first book request for the site!

If it can display a checkmark, can't it filter on whatever it's checking? So it only displays the ones that would have a checkmark? That would give the 'available' filter people are asking for.

10: Since you are asking for feedback... Frankly, flexible points is the main reason I'm only on BookMooch and not certain other trading sites. Flexible points SUCK, from what I've experienced.

Pros: You can get more points for your perfect-condition or really-heavy or really-rare book. You can put in the amount of points that YOU think the book is worth. I also like, on your site, that users can specify different point-values for international.

Cons: The books that you want are, by the very concept of "flexible points", most likely going to cost more then on regular 1-1 sites. If you are looking for a bestseller or the current "It" book, it will cost a LOT. If you are looking for a rare, out of print book, what's stopping the user who has it from requesting 10-20 points? (I couldn't tell, from the info on your site without signing up, if there is any type of CAP on how many points people can charge?)

I was briefly a member of another small booktrading site that used flexible points, and I found that almost ALL of the popular/bestseller books were priced at 10-15 points. That site also had a "recommeded point calculation", to give you an idea of what the book you are entering should be "worth" depending on availability/want, and most of the books I entered (older YA novels) were recommended at the 3-5 point range.

Just a quick update to anyone that is interested. I have significantly improved the search mechanism and it is now much easier to browse and see what books are available. We currently have almost 300 books available to trade and more are being added every day. Once again, thank you to everyone for your feedback and happy swapping!

Cheers,
Ben
www.changobooks.com

Hi Ben
Your site is looking nice;I can see all the hard work you have put into it :) An idea, for the product road-map:

Ability to search for books by point values.

User Story :) (yes you get stuck with my agile product manager skills here)

As a book swapper/trader I want to search for books valued at X points so that I can find a book to "trade/swap" today as I have nothing in my to be read pile for next week. I can order the book for X points and then can re-list the book to swap again soon :)

The X= number of variable points the user enters or a range perhaps

A question I have; is do you earn the point(s) when the trade is accepted or after the book is received? I have the poor luck on BM of many people accepting mooches and then delaying for months on end before sending the book if ever. If you can not mail the book with 7 days; then don't accept my request is my motto.

14: I guess you will never be mooching from me, then.
I *like* that BookMooch gives us not-so-rich people an option of sending out only so often. I wouldn't be able to use BookMooch (and in fact, it's the main reason I left another trading site), if I was punished/penalized/looked down on for not sending within 7 days. Paycheck to paycheck is how I live, and if moochers can't understand that is Real Life, then *they* shouldn't mooch from *me*.

15:

I have no problem with paycheck to paycheck living; that is how I live as well; I am hardly rich. I am not here to get into an argument over cost of living or rich vs middle class or the 99% theories. I was sharing my question about a new site offering books to trade internationally which are very few in nature.

In response to your statement is the following and please take this how I intent this which is very difficult via social media as you will read this through your perception of me and not my own voice. As with anything on a public website this is my opinion which agree or not is mine.

My theory is if the sender of the books can't afford to mail then don't post new books. When I can't afford to mail books I don't post anything and vacation my bookshelf. I have no problem with people who have points spending them; the person has earned the points so spend away--I think that is great and what I do; i save my points for when money is going to be extra tight such as when car insurance is due and then spend the points even though i have no books listed. That to me is why sites need things like vacation bookshelves but still allow people to login to the system to get books.

yes I have an issue with people who post books and know they can't afford to ship in a reasonable time frame and while I understand life can get in the way at times; I think a week is reasonable.

Please note and be very clear on this; I am talking in generalities here not about any specific case or person.

My main point was the sender should not receive the point which would allow the sender to get additional books before sending out their books...I have been burned many times on BM with just that scenario. So if the sender have to delay weeks or months then the sender should not get the points since the sender has not sent out the books yet. Yes I am aware I get the point back months later when I finally cancel it but by then the sender has mooched other books which honestly is just not OK because in the end the sender is stealing; the sender is getting something for nothing. The book was listed and requested but never sent. The sender then mooches other books and never mails anything out.

15;

Please understand I am NOT saying you have ever done that or will do that ever;I have no idea what you do on book trading sites or how you do it; I only know you from this forum.

I am honestly just trying to be fair to the receiver of the book as much to the sender.

I actually completely agree with you about the sender not recieving the point before the book has been shipped/recieved. I actually made that suggestion long ago about BookMooch, and was thoroughly shot down because it would be too hard on newbies that way.

And that is true. If a newbie signs up to BookMooch, or to this new "changebooks" site, and doesn't actually get their points until the books they send are marked recieved, that will take weeks. Possibly even months, if they are sending international. I don't know *any* newbie who would spend money on a site where they couldn't get anything back for months.

A week is not "reasonable" when you live paycheck to paycheck, sorry. Maybe it's reasonable in *your* situation, but that shouldn't be considered the majority. I get a paycheck every 2, 2 1/2 weeks (twice a month). How am I supposed to send out every single week if I don't get money every single week? That makes no sense.

Thankfully, *most* BookMoochers understand that many people live on a budget and can only afford to mail every so often. Most BMers understand that bills and such come first, and are patient about it.

ZoeyEve, thanks for your feedback. I'll add filtering by point value to my ever-growing list of new features. :)

To clarify about how the points work, when a book is requested, the points are immediately deducted from the requester's account. Points are not credited to the senders account until the book has been marked as sent. I will add this information to the FAQ. If you will not be able to send books for an extended period of time, you can put your account on vacation by editing your profile.

I don't have any plans to add a rule that says you must ship a book in X number of days, but instead I am planning to add a feature that will allow you to see what the average time-to-ship is for each user.

I joined today - I have a heap of books to add, which I was not prepared to post on BM due to the cost of postage per point from my country and the increase for me to mooch back.
This site may enable me to send at a reasonable amount for each point I get; still getting books to good homes while getting some books back for a reasonable return - which I can't any more (without help) on BM.
I need to look at how much others are charging to send to Australia first.
I will be adding a heap in the next few days if it looks promising...

ETA: Maybe we should make a "Chango" group?

I wonder if the giving the points when the book is marked sent will allow misusers of the site free reign. After a book is marked as sent, it can't be canceled by the requestor. I have certainly received books postmarked well over a month after they were marked sent. There's probably no perfect arrangement.

You know (to return to the delayed sending issue), I'm fine with looking for a book on BM, seeing that there's a copy available and then finding when I go to mooch that the owner has a statement that they will have to delay sending books for up to a month or something similar. It's quite another thing when a book is added to their inventory that is on my wishlist, I hurry to mooch it, only to be told that I will have to wait until "the new year" as they have too many pending mooches. And, yes, if you subtracted the pending mooches from their points total, they would be in the negative.

I have no problem with someone telling me that they will send in two or three weeks, as long as they communicate with me.

The problem with not 'awarding' points until the books are received is that it will severely disadvantage we who have REALLY expensive sea mail (let alone air mail) - like me.
I try to send within a week of requesting, but it still takes months (mostly) for my books to arrive - so then if I didn't get the points, I am penalised for others who abuse it.

Don't get me wrong - I concur with your point absolutely...I just don't know what the answer is... *grimace*

Add:
And I have to agree = if a member has a heap of delayed sends, then they should not be allowed to add more books to get more points (and thus more books for themselves) and add even more delays until they send the ones they have pending! Maybe a limit of twenty or whatever a flat-rate box is and excepting angel requests! That would be much more fair IMHO.

Definitely agree with not being able to add books when you have substantial delays. That's just WRONG. Delays because of budgetting or life-stuffs is completely reasonable; Continuing to add new books and get those points when you know you can't send in a timely manner? Definitely not good.

gerdemb, an average time-to-ship is an AWESOME idea! That way people can actually choose whether or not to request from someone who usually takes awhile to send out, and it might cut down on the "send my book NOW" type of mentality.

On Chango Books, senders don't receive points until they have marked the books as mailed. Of course there is nothing stopping someone from falsely marking a book as mailed, but then they'd have to be actively lying. On BM, users receive points without taking any action when books are requested which I think causes problems with some users accumulating points without sending books in a timely manner. There are always ways to cheat the system, but for now I'm assuming that our users are honest, but when abuses arise, I'll have to think about ways to deal with them.

I've gone ahead and created a Chango Books forum on LibraryThing: http://www.librarything.com/groups/changobooks There is also forum on the Chango Books site: http://www.changobooks.com/forum/

My activation fails and I cannot login. Is there someway you are able to verify my account? My e-mail is moniica@cheerful.com. Thank you.

Moniica, I just sent you a private email message about your problem. Hope it helps!

So i just joined this site, i'm waiting for my validation email. I think that I like the flexible points idea, although I don't have any previous experience on book sites other than bookmooch. I like that I can actually make books shipped within Canada (where I live) more points than international because it actually cost me more to send within my country than to the other side of the world.

I somewhat agree with the negative responses regarding the not getting points until books are sent in terms of the newbie experience. What about offering 5 points when you join, that way people can get a free book or two, and it would be incentive to keep the ball rolling.

I actually think the "5 points to join" ---or even just 2 or 3 -- would be better than the 1/10 point to post a book That was the cause, I think, of a lot of the inflation in the BookMooch system -- not to mention that it encourages people to list a bunch of "junk" books that are less likely to be requested in order to get points.

arrwa
Let me know if you have any problems registering for the site.

arrwa and hotrocks
I really like the idea of giving new users bonus points to get started, but the problem is controlling abuse. It's basically impossible to know if a new account is really a new member or just an existing member creating a new account to get more bonus points.

Regarding points for new inventory, we have to think about the system from a macro-economic level--somehow we have to add new points into the "economy". If we only assign points when members join, then the number of points in the economy can only grow while the number of members is growing. Encouraging members to add books to their inventory by giving a small bonus allows the economy to grow even when the number of members is not.

That being said, I share your concern about users adding "junk books". I've considered making the inventory bonus variable based on the "value" of the book, but I'm not sure exactly how to calculate that. I believe that at one point BookMooch gave extra bonus points for adding inventory that is in someone's wishlist. I might consider that, but I remember John saying that it also caused some problems...

Finally, my hope is that by allowing users to vary the point values for their books we can avoid the inflation problems that BookMooch had.

Cheers,
Ben

I signed up for Chango Books out of curiosity and listed a few books there. I am asking too many points for these books, so I am not surprised nobody has requested them. What I am doing is like a Dutch Auction: I will request fewer points for them in the future and see what happens.

However, I just got this email: "This week 8 books have been added by other Chango Books members."

8 books in a week? This is not exactly taking off like a rocket.

It is going slow but then i don't know how much Ben is advertising it. He also stated he is traveling for the next month so any bugs well won't really get fixed from what i read very quickly.

I have signed up, but am waiting until after the new year to post books. I have quite a few pending on BM right now and have to make sure I can afford to send.

i'll create an account. I don't imagine I'll see any books I want until a critical mass is achieved. I haven't seen much on BM for a long time. And yeah, I'd need to be able to upload my wishlist-- no way am I re-entering all those ISBNs. Good luck I'll keep checking back....

Best of luck!
Title Trade, PaberbackSwap, and Bookmooch all have good and bad points. Hope you pick the best, of all of them. Hope you do very well. I will post some books ASAP.
WELCOME TO THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF BOOKTRADING!

I'm back from vacation and have started working on the site again. Progress has been slow and steady--we're about ready to reach 1,000 books available. Besides running a very small Google Ad Words campaign, I'm not advertising the site and trying to rely on word-of-mouth advertising. I still have lots of the plans for the site and hope that we will reach a critical mass.

bertilak
The weekly emails you are receiving only show new books that have been recommended for you by our algorithm. There were more new books added in one week, but only 8 of them where recommended for you.

Cheers,
Ben

Not that I need to be involved with another site, but I did get a request via Chango Books and sent it out today!

Wow, how did I miss this? I guess I have been far too busy :P I may have to check this out next month. How is it going for people? :)

Also, is there a way to request points by country? For example I would want to ask more points for mailing where it is more expensive than where it is less expensive. In Canada sadly domestic shipping is quite expensive.

rainbowgirl28 Thanks for sending out your book! I hope you are enjoying the site.

Bcteagirl One of the unique features of Chango Books is that members can list their books with different point values for international and domestic shipping. More information here http://www.changobooks.com/info/

I requested a book from Chango and the other person never responded. The site automatically cancelled the request and put their account on hold after a week or so.

Nice!

I would love to see the site continue to develop and begin advertising so there would be more inventory...

Nice site. I have started entering inventory. I'd like to suggest a button under the Add to your Wishlist that says Post Your Book on the page where you are looking at the description of the book.

I've listed about 200 books on Changobooks and just set each one to the US (you set each book individually which I like). If anyone from Canada sees any of my books rxtheresa that they would like, I'll add international to it, just PM me. Right now that's the only country I really know how to send to as far as cost etc. Once I get better informed I'll add others.

I have a question: Are US territories included in the US category for shipping (since we have USPS and it costs the same)? Or are US territories considered international?

I suspect if they are considered international, I will never be able to get a book.

Alicemeg, If the territory where you live has US Media Mail like Puerto Rico does I'm pretty sure it would be considered US. Why don't you join and choose one of my books rxtheresa and we can test it out. If you don't see one of mine you like ask if I might have one you like as I have a lot more books to post on Changobooks.

Alicemeg, Ben says if you enter your address with zipcode it will appear as or you can select from USA.

Reviving this thread since there has been some Chango discussion in another thread recently. I have used Chango to send one book so far, and I have copied my wishlist (valid ISBNs only) from BookMooch to Chango.

I missed this thread back in April, and just saw it today. Took a very quick look, and it looks like everything's fiction. Is this deliberate, or did it just turn out that way?

If it is deliberate, I won't be using the site. I like reading history, and a site that effectively says, "trade your books, as long as they're fiction" isn't something I want to use.

>45 AnnaClaire: It certainly isn't all fiction. The book I sent was "Digital Video Hacks". I agree that the pickings remain slim, especially in comparison to BookMooch--although even BookMooch had at one time only a few thousand books available also. It's good to know your interests though, so that when I list more books I'll know to include non-fiction in the mix.

It's not deliberate, there just aren't many people using the site.

#45. I thought so at first too. The sidebar doesn't show all subjects. Using the search function helps.
There is room for improvement in the design of the site here, I suppose.