--- In [email protected], Kim <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> Free books to read is not the same as free books to hoard though!
>
***
Again - it is nice when our BC books keep on traveling. But we can't
control what happens to them once they leave our hands, and while we
may have expectations that an active BCer will want to pass a BC book
along and may even pony up for another copy if they want one to keep,
I don't think it's reasonable to expect finders who've never heard of
BC before to accept some unwritten (and unenforceable!) condition
about not keeping the book indefinitely.
I also don't think that keeping a book you love and plan to re-read
is the same thing as "hoarding". I'd only use "hoarding" for the
relatively few people who seem to go to a lot of trouble to acquire
every book they hear about, even though it's clear that they can't
possibly read them all in a lifetime, never mind within a year or
three. And some of those people aren't hoarding at all, they're
scamming for books to re-sell (not that they could make much on a
typical set of secondhand, well-read and thoroughly-labeled BC
books!).
Bottom line: there's no BookCrossing rule that BC-labeled books
cannot be kept by whoever finds, buys, or is given them. If the
person acquired the book under an explicit agreement to pass it along
within a certain time - a bookring, a trade-with-strings-attached -
they should do so, but even that is totally the responsibility of the
people involved.
You're certainly not alone in wanting BC books to keep traveling. And
I, as a very active BCer, am definitely one who has bought "keeper"
copies of books that I discovered via BC, so that I could pass the BC
copies on. But I can (a) afford to do that and (b) am devoted to the
site as a hobby (or maybe a lifestyle {grin}); lots of people who
find BC books aren't able to dash out and buy new books that readily,
and most of them would not understand why a site that's set up to
encourage sharing of books would, at the same time, try to prevent
someone who loves a "found" book from continuing to enjoy it...
If you're really upset at the idea that any of your BC books will
wind up in the hands of someone who will not pass them along ever (or
at least not in their lifetime!), you might prefer to stick to
bookrings or trades with other BCers (though even that's not a
guarantee that the books won't fall into the hands of the few people
who actually do hoard). But I hope you'll do at least some wild-
releasing, and will not be upset if a finder tags a book as "PC" -
most casual finders have no idea what the status codes mean and are
very likely to pass the books along without comment or release notes
anyway, so even those "PC"-tagged books might well be traveling again
already! [But BC is meant to be enjoyable; if you don't enjoy taking
the risk that a wild book will be captured and kept, then go for the
other options. But please don't go around telling people that they
*can't* keep BC books; that's simply not the case, and I'd hate for
anyone to be put off of the site because they think it's trying to
control what they do with their books...]
-GoryDetails
See the books I've set free at:
http://bookcrossing.com/referral/GoryDetails
Have you told a friend today? http://bookcrossing.com/tellafriend
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