Bookcrossing vs Free a Book

How does releasing and tracking books with Bookcrossing compare to Free a Book.

The experience

Bookcrossing is website based and will appeal to people who are primarily focused on the book tracking aspect.

Free a Book is a more analogue, traditional experience. It is focused on the joy of handwritten book inscriptions and all you need is a pen. No website or app is necessary.

Releasing books

The Bookcrossing release process requires you to login to www.bookcrossing.com to register a book. This will automatically generate a unique Bookcrossing ID (BCID).

You then stick printed labels in your book which contain a blank space for you to write the BCID. This label also explains to any finder how they should enter the BCID at Bookcrossing.com to make a journal entry.

With Free a Book, you write a gift inscription by hand in a blank space at the front of the book.

This is the only thing you need to do, unless you release a book in the wild, in which case you would also need to add a Post-It note to the front cover with "Free book" written on it.

Tracking books

The Bookcrossing ID is a very comprehensive method of tracking your book.

It will track all of the "hops" as a book is passed from one person to another, assuming the finder makes a journal entry, and that record will be viewable on the Bookcrossing website to anyone who finds the book.

Alternatively, Free a Book simply relies on writing an email address in your gift inscription.

An email address will still allow you to track all of the different people who find it, if they send you a message, but that information will only be available to you.

The catch rate

When bookcrossers talk about a "catch rate", they are referring to the number of journal entries they have received, compared to the number of books released.

For example, ten books released with one journal entry would be a catch rate of ten percent.

With Free a Book it would refer to the number of emails received instead of journal entries, and I tend to say "response rate" or "reply rate", but it's exactly the same thing.

Will the catch rate or response rate with Free a Book be the same as Bookcrossing? This is something that will only be determined after an extensive trial.

Book damage

The labels used for Bookcrossing have to be strong, as there will be no way to track the book if the label with the BCID falls off. So you could argue that this is damaging the book.

On the other hand, it's now a "Bookcrossing book", so the labels are part of its new identity. Most bookcrossers don't have a problem with it.

When you write a gift inscription in your book, some people would also consider that to be damaging. But many people, like me, love book inscriptions.

So it really depends on your personal attitude.

Bookcrossers wanted!

If you're a bookcrosser, would you like to try this alternative method of releasing books with a gift inscription? I'd love to know how you feel it compares to Bookcrossing.

The Free a Book project is purely for fun and is not intended to be a competitor to Bookcrossing.

Please contact me if you'd like to trial it.