{"id":38794363,"date":"2007-10-24T13:44:00","date_gmt":"2007-10-24T13:44:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.casey.com\/2007\/10\/set-a-book-free.html"},"modified":"2013-04-05T06:15:26","modified_gmt":"2013-04-05T06:15:26","slug":"200710set-a-book-free-html","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/casey.life\/blog\/2007\/10\/24\/200710set-a-book-free-html\/","title":{"rendered":"Set A Book Free"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a title=\"View 'Passalong Book' on Flickr.com\" href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/57572221@N00\/1713727198\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Passalong Book\" src=\"http:\/\/farm3.static.flickr.com\/2153\/1713727198_9a8414aa24_m.jpg\" width=\"240\" height=\"180\" align=\"right\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a>Today I had a good idea. A great idea really. I had just finished a really great book, and typically I would have happily shelved it, content to have another good book in my personal library. But having discussed this book with a friend, I thought to make it a gift to him, which is a nice thought. But I then imagined him finishing it, and happily shelving it with his books, rather than it being happily shelved with mine, and the thought had less appeal. I don&#8217;t know why, I guess I&#8217;m selfish. But here&#8217;s where the idea came in. What if I gave the book away, on the condition that the recipient would likewise give it away when he finished it? And here&#8217;s where the idea gets a cool, tech twist&#8230; what if you could track where it went?<\/p>\n<p>Certainly such an idea can&#8217;t be that original I thought, and some searching online found that it was not. I found a few web sites that facilitate the free swapping of books by mail, but that&#8217;s not what I was looking for. I wanted to turn a book loose, to be found, read, tracked, and turned loose again. I found my idea, already in full fruition at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bookcrossing.com\/\">BookCrossing.com<\/a>. The site offers all of the features I was looking for, and so I registered my book, and gave it to James. Tonight I printed up some labels to use for future releases, the first of which will be <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bookcrossing.com\/journal\/5584005\">my own book<\/a>, which will be set free in the wilds of Washington, DC tomorrow. May it find a good reader, and be passed along many times.<\/p>\n<p>Five years ago, I entered five dollars into the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wheresgeorge.com\/\">Where&#8217;s George<\/a> site. None have yet had any of their travels recorded. I hope the books I release do better.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today I had a good idea. A great idea really. I had just finished a really great book, and typically I would have happily shelved it, content to have another good book in my personal library. But having discussed this book with a friend, I thought&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2,33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38794363","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-web-surfin"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3mOvc-2CMbx","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/casey.life\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38794363","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/casey.life\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/casey.life\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casey.life\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casey.life\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38794363"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/casey.life\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38794363\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":173354126,"href":"https:\/\/casey.life\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38794363\/revisions\/173354126"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/casey.life\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38794363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casey.life\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38794363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casey.life\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38794363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}