BookMooch, LibraryThing

After attending the excellent Sohemians reading of James Curtis' The Gilt Kid last week, and not buying it from the stall afterwards like I should have*, I tried in a couple of large book stores and one local second-hand shop, neither of which had it available.

John Buckman's BookMooch is great for this kind of thing: no copies were available there either, but I added it to my wishlist and will get an alert when one turns up. It's reminiscent of AudioGalaxy, one of whose programmers has a series of blog posts describing the build-up of Audiogalaxy (and how its potential was nipped in the bud overnight by an overzealous recording industry association).

BookMooch also has an option in the profile preferences for turning on features relevant to (also excellent) LibraryThing, whose founder Tim Spalding in interviewed in yet another interesting Interviews with Innovators podcast this week by Jon Udell.

* I now see that it's available online, with an easy, no sign-up ordering process. Score 1 for London Books.