Read & Release

Do you love to read? Do you want to part with some of your books?

If you answered "Yes" to one or both of those questions, maybe you should consider the "Read & Release" program on BookCrossing.com

The idea for BookCrossing came to Ron Hornbaker back in March of 2001, as he and his wife Kaori were admiring the PhotoTag.org site, which tracks disposable cameras loosed into the wild. He already knew about the popularity of WheresGeorge.com (which tracks U.S. currency by serial number), and that got him thinking: what other physical object might people enjoy tracking? A few minutes later, after a glance at his full bookshelf, the idea of tracking books occurred to him. After two hours of research on the Internet, Ron realized, to his surprise, that nothing like BookCrossing had been done on any significant scale. And so they went to work. By 3 A.M. that morning, they had decided on the name (zero hits for "bookcrossing" on Google), registered the domain, and Kaori had sketched the running book logo on a crossing sign. The rest was merely execution.

Over the past 7 years, BookCrossing has continued to grow, and move closer to making the whole world a library: over 5,360,619 books have been released worldwide. It has captured the passion and imagination of over (740,000) people worldwide who to help spread the bounty of books through www.bookcrossing.com. Read and Release!

Even if you don't want to release some of your own books, you can search for released books in your area. Find the book, register it, read it, and release it again into the wild. It's fun.

I've released 28 books into the wild. Only one person acknowledged finding a book I released, but it hasn't discouraged me from trying again.