This is fun, BookCrossing. Who would have thought that leaving your books in out in the wild and let somebody else pick it up, read it, and hopefully they would leave a little note behind in your BookCrossing account. It started out way back in 2001 when Ron and his wife Kaori were admiring PhotoTag.org site where disposable cameras were let go in the wild and was tracked based on the serial number. So they came up with the idea of leaving books around either at specific BookCrossing designated areas or random points of place.
Took them about a year before it became a little phenomenon. It is just for fun thing to track some books that you leave behind for people who would pick it up and read it. The BookCrossing website don’t make anything much and relies on Google Ads and member purchase of stickers to survive.
Well I have a little account there now, and release several books. Though mostly my Reader’s Digest books which are sitting in my bookshelf and getting into a nice minty yellow with age. Well it’s time to release them! Since 1-Utama is the nearest BookCrossing drop off zone for me, that was where I left my books.
I think Reader’s Digest despite being an old print still have very good compelling articles and stories about life and such. Because the last I checked they were all taken. So far only one kind soul has left a comment in my BookCrossing journal. All others were pretty much silent. Either they don’t know what is BookCrossing all about or they are just plain lazy to bother leaving a note.
So much for BookCrossing in Malaysia. I don’t know, maybe Malaysians are not so tech savvy or they are not so into this strange behaviour of journaling some object for tracking around or perhaps it is free and they just take. Well, Malaysians do get a little kiasu sometimes. Or is it kiabo?
While I’m at it, I left a little extra note on where to find my website. Not sure if anybody will bother to type it in looking at the way that so far only one person has left a journal entry while the rest seem deafeningly silent. Ok, ok, so I’m doing a little self promotion here. This is what you call guerrilla marketing.
Well if you are looking for my BookCrossing bookshelf URL to have a peak what books have been release, here it goes:
My BookCrossing Bookshelf @ http://bookcrossing.com/mybookshelf/JanLeow [update: 1/3/2016 – the site is gone! I suppose the interest waned]
Other than that, happy hunting!