Business Opportunities Weblog

April 21, 2008 by Rich Whittle | 2 Comments

CNet News:

Like some of the luckiest people in high tech, John Buckman made a mint on his first company and now dabbles in passion projects.

But one of his latest companies may prove he’s more than just lucky, at least if you buy the Silicon Valley adage: Strike it rich once, you’re lucky. Twice, you’re smart.

BookMooch, Buckman’s 20-month-old service that lets people trade their used books for the cost of postage, is making a small impression on a giant online retailer, Amazon.com. Even though BookMooch is free to members, the site generates an estimated half-million dollars in annual book sales for Amazon because of a browser plug-in called the Moochbar, which matches members’ book wish lists to Amazon’s retail inventory. For every 25 books swapped on BookMooch, at least one person buys a new book on Amazon through the Moochbar. BookMooch collects 8.34 percent on each of those Amazon sales.

“We’re making money by accident,” said Buckman, who spoke recently at a technology luncheon near his home in Berkeley, Calif.

Apart from still-negligible sales, what should be more of a wake-up call to the book industry is how the site is tapping into the so-called long tail of book retail with a social, free service. The long tail, as the theory goes, accounts for as much as 60 percent of the goods sold in an industry, or all those unpopular works that find a home with only a few. It’s said that the lion’s share of Amazon’s book sales come from works that have a low sales ranking.

Even if he doesn’t strike it rich with BookMooch, Buckman may do something more valuable…like prove there’s another way to tap into the book business.

Photo by BookMooch.

In Books, Internet, Startup | 2 Comments