front cover (Book condition)

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front cover

I got two books with the front cover removed. Why? Should I be worried?

Larry Mayer
14 years ago

If you mooched them you should be worried that the owner didn't mention that in the condition notes! Books with covers removed are books that were removed from a store inventory when they are past the sell date. Smaller bookstores or chain stores that don't have room to keep lots of inventory will rip the cover off the books and list them "destroyed" rather than mailing them back to the distributer. Employees sometimes just take these books home to read. You are not supposed to sell these, however, I have seen them in charity book stalls and on Bookmooch a couple of times. You don't need to worry about it unless you intended on selling them. The publishers are not going to come after you for having them;) I used to worry about the mattress company coming after me for removing that label;)

Cara
14 years ago

I recently received a book that was in acceptable shape as per the senders notes, a little tattered...but when I opened the sealed package it was full of at least 4 different sizes of cockroaches and eggs.

I hesitantly gave the point but I'm not sure I will keep the book. I immediately sealed it in plastic and put it outside after killing the bugs. I'm now trying to decide whether to keep it or trash it. It is a hardcover book and I think there are eggs in the binding. I don't want to have to buy bug spray to kill them, it's probably easier just to pitch the book.

Is it acceptable to put in your notes to 'please not to accept my book requests if you have cockroaches'?

Danita Rogers
13 years ago

@Danita Rogers
What you have immediate control over (-1/0/+1), is the feedback you give.
The point was already transferred when you requested the book, and won't come back unless you choose to communicate with the sender to ask that it be refunded (I think you definitely should) and they comply.

And a cockroaches-filled book definitely warrants negative feedback if you can't sort the issue with the sender peacefully.
Take a few snapshots of the thing (clearly identifiable book + vermin) if you have a digital camera and want some "proof" and chuck it after you've taken adequate step to kill the bugs. Don't even try to salvage it and risk contaminating a reasonably clean environment.

This site has nothing like "requestor's conditions" unless you use the notes field in each of your requests for them. But one should definitely not *have* to ask for roaches-free books.

Aude
13 years ago

The books I post are generally in good to vg condition. If it's considered "acceptable" due to such things as yellowing, I mark that. If hardcovers are missing djs I post that. However, when receiving books from BookMooch it is considered hit or miss b/c each person's rating for book conditions are subjective. A few times I received books that I had to fix b/c the binding was torn and/or they reeked b/c they came from smoking homes. I am on two other sites: Paperbackswap and Swap.com and they each have attributes respectively that I think Bookmooch should consider adopting:

Paperbackswap: has a account feature where the moocher can request a specific condition of the book (i.e no books from smoking home, no highlighted books, etc.) If the book doesn't match the requested criteria, the giver declines the request and the point goes back into the system for the next copy.

Swap.com: has a mandatory section when posting books requiring the giver to mark the condition of the book, and the conditions are defined for the giver too (i.e new, like new, very good, good, acceptable, w/ definitions for each).

These changes may help improve the BookMooch experience.

Dacaria
13 years ago

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