Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1292852

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Releasing books into the wild. Communal gift-giving at Bookcrossing.com

Daniele Dalli, Matteo Corciolani Dipartimento di Economia Aziendale

Via Ridolfi, 10 56124 Pisa – Italy

Tel. +390502216347 Fax. +39050541403

E-mail: dalli@ec.unipi.it

Abstract

The essence of Bookcrossing (BC) is “releasing books into the wild”. BC members leave their books at a railway station, in a pub, or even on a park bench, as a gift for someone they do not know. In this sense, BC is an alternative system of book exchange, based on gift-giving, which par-allels and partly challenges the traditional market exchange system.

But this is not the only way that BC members exchange books: more mundane and even superficial tasks are accomplished in order to achieve satisfactory exchanges, with no reference to higher order objectives, such as emancipation and resistance.

Sometimes gift-giving communities (open source or peer-to-peer) are considered metaphors of collective solidarity, but they present elements of opportunism and selfishness: many subjects receive and do not give any-thing. Even those who give, as in the case of BC, do it for very practical and sometimes selfish reasons.

BC is a good setting for confronting different theoretical perspectives on gift-giving: in order to explain how BC works as a system, it is necessary to integrate various gift-giving theories. Considered from this perspective, gift-giving communities like BC are fragmented and highly differentiated entities, sometimes working for a better and more acceptable market.

Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1292852

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Releasing books into the wild.

Communal gift-giving at Bookcrossing.com

And it’s only The giving

That makes you What you are

(Aqualung, 1972)

Introduction

This paper addresses communal gift-giving (Hollenbeck, Peters et al. 2006). The empirical analysis deals with the BC community, which will be considered a gift system in terms of social distinctions, norms of reciproci-ty, and rituals and symbolisms (Giesler 2006, p. 284).

The essence of BC is “releasing books into the wild”: Bookcrossers leave their books at a railway station, in a pub, or even on a park bench, hoping that someone they do not know will pick them up, read, and in turn pass them on. Basically, BC is an alternative system of book exchange, based on gift-giving, which parallels and partly challenges the traditional market exchange system.

As such, the essence of BC seems to parallel that of other forms of gift economy, such as the open source movement (Hemetsberger 2006; He-metsberger and Reinhardt 2006). At the same time it differs from peer-to-peer communities (Huang 2005; Becker and Clement 2006; Giesler 2006) for a number of reasons, which will be described below.

But within BC there are many forms of book giving: not all of them can be classified as “communal”. In fact the purest form of communal gift-giving - releasing books into the wild - is only one element in the BC system, performed by the more active and involved members, while other mem-bers, with different and more mundane objectives, follow different strate-gies.

The objective of the paper is to describe the internal differentiation and fragmentation of the BC community, in which higher order and more ordi-nary objectives interact and contribute to the overall equilibrium of the system. One possible extension of this research is that other communities (e.g. peer-to-peer, open source, etc.) can also be considered from this perspective and hence they can no longer be regarded as champions of solidarity and altruism, as happens when the community is described in terms of its more committed and active members. These communities present various facets, all of which contribute to the effectiveness of the whole system (Kates and Belk 2001; Kozinets 2002).

Theoretical framework

Gift-giving research emerged as one of the constituent streams of re-search of the interpretive tradition, which has addressed the symbolic and

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the social dimensions of exchange behaviors (Arnould and Thompson 2005, p. 871). Many authors from the consumer research tradition have addressed this topic from several perspectives since the seminal work of Belk (1976; 1979) and Sherry (1983).

In this paper, the extant literature will be reviewed in order to identify the conditions in which gift-giving may arise and to describe the relationships between givers and receivers. The essence of BC and its internal differen-tiation and fragmentation will also be described and explained.

Gift-giving as exchange

Within the literature on gift-giving various exchange systems have been described and discussed. Belk and Coon (1993), among others, have compared economic and social exchange models of gift-giving. Both mod-els imply an “exchange” dimension in which the reciprocity of gift-giving is assessed and reassured. The economic perspective is rooted in the classic analysis of Mauss (1925) and gift-giving is treated as a means of develop-ing interdependence between individuals. This also holds when looking at gift-giving from the perspective of specific giver-receiver relationships (Sherry 1983).

The social perspective deals with the cultural and symbolic aspects of so-cial life, other than purely economic ones; gift-giving arises as a ritual in which individuals contribute to the creation and support of social order (Malinowski 1922; Smith 1980; Weiner 1992).

Pure forms of gift-giving: the agapic love metaphor and charity

Alternative to the exchange paradigm, the “agapic love” model (Belk and Coon 1993) should represent the purest form of gift-giving: expressive, emotional, nonbinding, altruistic, and with no emphasis on economic value (Murnighan, Jae Wook et al. 1993; Thompson and Bono 1993). From this perspective, Belk and Coon (1993) highlight the importance of those situ-ations in which gift-giving is neither aimed at creating interdependence, nor guided by strict norms of direct reciprocity between the giver and the receiver.

In particular, when the receiver is unknown and/or the relationship be-tween the giver and the receiver is loose, then gift-giving can be asso-ciated with charity, another pure form of giving (Fischer, Gainer et al. 1996; Mathur 1996). According to Larsen and Watson (2001, p. 894) “the connection between giver and receiver is the inescapable backdrop within which a gift-giving experience must be examined”, while Giesler (2006, p. 284) considers “consumer networks of social solidarity” to be gift systems, provided that conditions of social distinction, norms of reciprocity, and ri-tuals and symbolism are met. In this article we follow the latter interpre-tation: charity is considered a form of gift-giving and, in a collective set-ting (many givers and many receivers, loosely coupled), it can be consi-dered a form of communal gift-giving.

Communal gift-giving: convergence and controversies

Elements of pure gift-giving also emerge in communal gift-giving. As hap-pens in pure gift-giving, but also in more common situations (Ertimur and

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Sandikci 2005), communal gift-giving can be seen as the interplay be-tween altruism and personal interest (Rheingold 1993), with little or no reference to any kind of implicit or explicit exchange between a giver and a receiver (Hollenbeck, Peters et al. 2006).

Communal gift-giving arises in open source systems that are based on a gift economy model (Cheal 1988) in which there is no formal obligation to give and give back, but there are social and symbolic processes that pro-vide incentives for giving: reputation, status, self-realization, etc. (Ray-mond 1999; Zeitlyn 2003). In the case of digital environments, in which gifts take the form of digital replicas, the role of the web is very important as a means of transforming dyadic reciprocity norms into collective ones (Bergquist and Ljungberg 2001; Giesler and Pohlmann 2003). This also holds when gifts are bought on the web, but do not necessarily take a dig-ital form (Hollenbeck, Peters et al. 2006).

Moreover, gift systems such as peer-to-peer (e.g. eMule, Kazaa and Tor-rent) and open source systems are inspired by ideological objectives; members of these communities feel committed to a project of emancipa-tion and liberation from the constraints of the traditional market exchange system and they collaborate in reacting against the monopolistic power of large multinationals and the “failures” of the market process (Giesler 2006; Hemetsberger 2006).

This said, in some of these communities, gift-giving often appears to be very far from the pure model (Kollock 1999; Giesler and Pohlmann 2003; Huang 2005; Becker and Clement 2006; Giesler 2006):

• in peer-to-peer communities, gifts are digital replicas of original ver-sions that do not cost a single dollar/euro;

• the vast majority of community members are actually “leeching” the system, without providing any support in terms of new file uploads;

• peer-to-peer systems can be seen as both theft and gift systems: up-loading and downloading are forbidden per se in many countries, and they are often aimed at commercial activities that strikingly contravene the copyright protection principle and related norms.

In these terms, peer-to-peer communities, considered as a whole, do not resemble the pure form of communal gift-giving, apart from the role of the most committed members. Rather, they could (also) be considered as vehicles for opportunism and exploitation. Free riders and opportunists still play a role in the system, supporting traffic and exchange (Giesler and Pohlmann 2003; Becker and Clement 2006), but they cannot be regarded as subjects of communal gift-giving.

Theoretical implications for empirical analysis

To sum up, it seems that various forms of gift-giving interact with each other: economic exchange, social exchange, agapic love and charity, and communal gift-giving. In some cases they can be easily identified in the modern world within coherent and homogeneous conditions, while in other

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cases it is necessary to select a specific portion of the phenomenon in or-der to emphasize their role, as in the case of gift-giving within peer-to-peer communities.

In this paper, the aim is to describe the BC community in possibly all of its facets, in order to assess its nature as a gift system, with a certain degree of differentiation of the conditions in which gift-giving (or charity) is rea-lized. One implication of this work is that other forms of communal gift-giving can be seen from this perspective and a more careful approach is needed before labeling these communities gift systems, provided that they also present other important dimensions.

In the following sections the methods employed for the empirical analysis will be presented and data about the essence of BC and its internal diffe-rentiation will be discussed, in order to give factual evidence of the theo-retical analysis developed above.

Research design

Bookcrossing: the community

BC was born in 2001, when Ron Allen Hornbaker published the website (www.bookcrossing.com), on which book lovers can register the book that they have “released” and follow its story as it moves from one Bookcross-er to another. BC has become a mass phenomenon and the Concise Ox-ford English Dictionary defines it as “the practice of leaving a book in a public place to be picked up and read by others, who then do likewise”.

As mentioned earlier, the very nature of BC is releasing books into the wild. Basically, BC is a sort of alternative exchange system for books, based on a very peculiar notion of gift-giving, which parallels and partly challenges the traditional market exchange system. In December 2007 there were more than 600,000 Bookcrossers worldwide, who have regis-tered around 4,500,000 books.

Methods

Basic ethnographic tools were used in the empirical analysis: netnogra-phy, participant observation, and direct interviews. Since this community is still a relatively new object of study (MacLaran and Masterson 2006), interpretive strategies and qualitative analysis are the appropriate ways of gaining insights into basic themes and meanings (Mariampolski 1999).

More specifically, to analyze the BC community we employed mostly net-nography (Kozinets 2002) because the website is the main context in which BC members interact. We have also analyzed off-line contexts through participant observation (Sayre 2001; Daymon and Holloway 2002) and direct interviews (McCracken 1988) in order to cross-validate results from different sources (on and off line).

Netnography has been used to collect data from official website forums in Italian and Spanish (Activists Only, Introduce Yourself, Newbies, Release Challenges, Testimonials and Feature Request) and from other sources (the Italian mailing list and other related web resources). Sources have been selected to give a realistic representation of the whole community,

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without focusing on specific aspects. Further, we have analyzed data from general forums (generally in English) and country-level forums (Italian and Spanish) in order to triangulate results. Finally, the amount of data has driven the selection, giving more room to those sources that generate more data.

Participant observations and interviews were performed in Italy; during observation the researcher played the role of participant observer (Sayre 2001; Daymon and Holloway 2002). The true identity and the role of the researcher were revealed when asking for permission to take part in the meetings, but they were not a major concern during the meetings.

Data collection began in July 2005 with informal observations of the BC website and conversations with BC members. Secondary data were used (newspapers, on-line journals, Wikipedia, and so on) to develop a general understanding of the phenomenon. Actual netnography started in October 2005 and is still running. Since March 2006, one of the authors has been attending monthly meetings of local BC members. In June 2006, the same author took part in the national meeting of the Italian BC community. During these meetings direct interviews were recorded.

Data analysis followed the pattern suggested by Romano et al. (2003): the first step of data mass reduction was performed in three different phases (selection, coding, and clustering) followed by final interpretation. Data were digitally recorded and then manipulated using Atlas.ti 5.2.

Results

The essence of Bookcrossing

Three basic activities are performed by Bookcrossers: read, register and release. After reading the book, it has to be registered on the website with a specific code (BCID) that is unequivocally associated with the book and the member. Then the member has to download the label to be attached to the book: it will carry the BCID and further messages to the potential recipient. Then the book can be released. The label also presents informa-tion about BC and how it works, to help novice users and/or people not aware of the BC system to enter the community and perform the 3Rs again and again.

An ad hoc space (the journal) is created on the website in which the member releasing the book uploads the release note, giving instructions about the place where the book has been left. This is very important for BC members that like to go hunting, that is, looking for books that have been released into the wild. Those who pick up the book will be able to add comments and further release notes as well.

Bookcrossing.com can be considered an example of communal gift-giving. But, unlike peer-to-peer communities, Bookcrossers give physical goods, and not digital replicas; they actually sacrifice their own copies and/or their money to buy extra copies to be released; BC does not replace the market (released copies were bought), instead it integrates the market trying to correct some of its drawbacks and improve its efficacy (Kozinets 2002; Hemetsberger 2006).

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From this perspective, BC is very close to the ideal form of communal gift systems, in which the web plays an important role: provided that books are not virtual gifts and cannot be distributed in a digital form, the website enables community members to exchange data about giving and receiv-ing, and forms the locus in which the communal dimension of the gift sys-tem can arise.

It should be noted that releasing books into the wild does not necessarily lead to success. According to the BC website estimates, only 25% of the books released into the wild are registered and further released. Of these books, only 15% are found by individuals who are new to BC and then register themselves and the book they found. This low level of perfor-mance is one of the reasons for the emergence of new modes for releas-ing books.

Together with performance, personal motivations and the role members want to play in the community affect the variety of rituals for book-giving, which will be reviewed in the next section.

Internal differentiation and fragmentation: how many release rituals?

Unlike previous studies that tend to focus on one dimension of these communities, BC gift-giving will be described in terms of its many facets, in order to give a complete representation of the various rituals carried out by the members to accomplish the task (Rook 1985; Muniz and O'Guinn 2001; Ruth, Brunel et al. 2004). In fact, behind the “pure” form of BC (release into the wild), there are other forms of exchange that can be performed according to the role each member wants to play in the community (Kozinets 1999; Kates and Belk 2001).

According to purists, book liberation has to be accomplished by releasing them into the wild. This can happen in a bar or at a railway station, as well as in a public park, a telephone booth, and even a theater.

One basic reason for this strategy is that of sending the book out there, looking for someone that would not otherwise read it. In this sense the book is usually represented (within the community jargon) as a “message in a bottle”, something that is sent out without specifying the receiver. This is probably the more romantic and idealistic perspective in BC.

Within twenty years my son could discover one of my books down the street and he will check the BC website

to find out my feelings and emotions about the book at the moment I released it. It’s so exciting, like leaving a

message in a bottle (M, Interview published in a local newspaper).

Bookcrossers know for sure that releasing books into the wild rarely means that they are actually received by anyone. It needs patience, a bit of pain, and trust. Commitment and trust are very important to support this ritual.

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Hello, all! ... from Seattle, Washington, USA. So far I

don't have too many Journal entries from my wild re-

leases. Went to the mall and a large store today to see if the books were in Lost and Found. They weren't so

now I just have to be patient and hope the finder will journal and release again (R, Introduce yourself forum)

As in other forms of communal consumption, Bookcrossers seem to attach importance to some level of sacrifice (economic, material, moral, etc.) in order to grasp fully the experience of consumption (Belk and Costa 1998; Dobscha and Ozanne 2001; Brown, Kozinets et al. 2003; Muniz and Schau 2005). This is probably one of the sources of the authenticity they often associate with BC.

In other cases they want to express their critical stance towards market exchange and support alternative exchange systems. From this perspec-tive, releasing books into the wild can be seen as a project of social trans-formation: book giving is often aimed at educating the consumer and emancipating him/her from the market (Murray and Ozanne 1991; Kozi-nets and Handelman 2004). In this vein, those Bookcrossers who seek au-thenticity are interested in both personal emancipation, as a form of per-sonal purification (Firat and Venkatesh 1995), and also collective emanci-pation (Penaloza and Price 1993; Kozinets 2002; Giesler and Pohlmann 2003; Firat and Dholakia 2006; Hemetsberger 2006).

As a consequence, the releaser often aims at involving other members in-to BC by means of wild releases. Many Bookcrossers are highly committed to supporting the community (e.g. translating instructions, developing ex-ternal resources like mailing lists, and organizing off-line activities). Re-leasing books into the wild is, then, one of the most important avenues for proselytism.

In some cases, releasing books into the wild can be seen as a challenge and, as such, as a pure form of fun: the journal describes the context in which the book has been left and other members are challenged to find it (go hunting).

In other cases, these motivations are interrelated; for instance, Book-crossers often leave their books in hotel rooms, in the hope that the book will be taken by someone from a different country, possibly very far from their own. In this way, they hope the book will move very far, allowing people from different cultures to feel more integrated and close to each other, by means of cultural exchange.

In yet other cases, release challenges are affected by emancipation pur-poses, as in those situations in which the book is left in traditional market exchange settings.

I must say I smiled all day after releasing my first book

"into the wild" (at a local McDonalds). When I am stuck in a boring situation (meetings, etc.) I daydream of

new and creative places to release my next book. Thank you for showing me how my book has a "long

life" after I am done with it (S, Testimonials forum)

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Release challenges are often inspired by ideological, as well as cultural ob-jectives: Bookcrossers often opt to connect the challenge to specific events, such as the anniversary of the writers they love, as well as to spe-cific genres or subcultures they want to promote.

Releasing books into the wild is a typical “off-line” activity, but it is well documented on the website and all of its related activities and rituals are represented in specific forums (Release Techniques and Release Chal-lenges) in which BC members are given the chance to show their talent or simply exchange experiences. These texts show the many reasons for re-leasing books into the wild that deal with higher order values and goals: romantic emancipation, authenticity, anonymous purification, and pure al-truism. Secondly, still ethically oriented factors are individual and collec-tive emancipation, transformative resistance, cultural provocation, and community promotion. But there are also more ordinary, but highly self-fulfilling objectives, such as fun (meeting challenge tasks) and competition (improving release statistics).

Books can also be exchanged during meet-ups: members of local BC clubs get to know each other, to exchange books and ideas about BC and to perform other activities, such as dining together, and listening to live mu-sic. In this case, members arrive at the meet-up with some books that have been already registered and are due to be exchanged.

Meet-ups are the social side of BC: during these meetings, BC members have the opportunity to interact and perform social rituals that go far beyond the essence of BC: parties, pizza, concerts, etc. (Schouten and McAlexander 1995; Muniz and O'Guinn 2001; McAlexander, Schouten et al. 2002). Within these rituals Bookcrossers discuss about books and BC and sometimes they behave as in “reading clubs” (Shankar 2006). In general, meet-ups are oriented towards typical BC exchanges, but they also serve as a relational setting: the main purpose of Bookcrossers par-ticipating in meet-ups seems to be “making new friends”.

In some cases, tension may arise, when more committed members take part in the meet-up and feel that other members are not committed enough to the more authentic aspect of BC (Kates 2002).

Perhaps we turned out to be simply friends: freshness and enthusiasm for Bookcrossing have left room for

happy meals, together with our best friends. And we do not discuss any more about the thrill of liberating and

hunting (F, Italian Mailing List)

This also holds when we consider that meet-ups are often attended by in-dividuals who are only interested in individualistic gratification, expressed in terms of personal gains. When that happens, the BC spirit emerges somewhat degenerated by opportunistic behaviors: some members bring books with virtually no value, either in economic or personal terms. This is the case for books from cheap and commercial publishers, but also old copies of books they have never read, or even copies taken from the bookshelves of parents, friends and relatives. These behaviors are aimed

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at getting some results in terms of books released and registered (compe-tition and prestige), but also in terms of the possibility of getting interest-ing books in exchange for bad ones.

From another perspective, the meet-up may also be a good opportunity for ideological emancipation. In Italy, a new form of meet-up has emerged, one that aims at connecting the social/fun dimension with the emancipative/transformative one: it is called “La cultura è appesa a un filo” (culture is hanging from a thread). It has been promoted by one of the most active members of the community, reviewed in several articles on the main website, and it is known as The Italian Job. Bookcrossers or-ganize their meet-ups in a commercial area (in public spaces within malls, in front of chain bookstores, etc.) and they link local poles or other sup-ports with some sort of cord, such as a clothes line, and hang their books on the line. BC members make themselves available to give information and advice about the initiative and BC in general. This is a form of com-munication to make people aware of BC, as well as a release mode. More-over, it is aimed at stimulating creative resistance (Holt 2002), in that it is a form of gift economy located in the core of the traditional market ex-change.

Meet-ups are also very important because Bookcrossers are sure that the book they bring will be received by someone that will register it. Meet-ups are therefore a very efficient form of safe release: those interested in per-formance, competition, and prestige will be very much interested in taking part in meet-ups (Kozinets 2002). Moreover, during meet-ups BC mem-bers often discuss and develop new release challenges, stimulating the competitive dimension of BC.

In general, the BC community seems to be very active in the off-line set-ting, and meet-ups are representative of this aspect (Arnould and Price 1993). They look like the meetings of more traditional brand communities, and the more involving and important ones can be compared to brand-fests (McAlexander et al., 2002).

Books can also be released in an OBCZ (Official BookCrossing Zone); within the BC website there is a section in which members and visitors can check for the OBCZs in their area. These can be libraries, bars, shops with a dedicated room for BC1; in these zones it is possible to find information about BC in general and local activities, and release or pick up books.

OBCZs are very effective for those interested in release performance. As in the case of the meet-up, it is very likely that the book will be taken and further registered; as a result those members interested in performance and prestige frequently use this release mode. However, as in the case of meet-ups, there is also room for free riders. Unlike meet-ups, in which there is some social control over the exchange process, those interested in

1 More information about OBCZ can be found in the Bookcrossing website (/community/crossing zones) and within the dedicated forum (OBCZ managers).

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releasing fake books and getting good ones find OBCZs a perfect setting for their objectives.

Still, the OBCZ is also very interesting for those members concerned with higher order values and objectives: OBCZs are, in fact, permanent dedi-cated spots in which the BC philosophy can be witnessed and suitably rep-resented. Similarly, romantic members, in search of authentic values, can find “protection” and a home here, at least temporarily. As one local BC coordinator defined it, “releasing books into OBCZs is a sort of indoor re-leasing into the wild” (personal interview).

Finally, the most recent release mode is the bookring, which is rapidly growing in popularity. The basic bookring release mode is a list of people, available on the website, who are registered to receive a specific book. Participants in a bookring wait their turn to receive the book and, once read and registered, send the book to the next participant, usually by or-dinary mail. The last member on the list sends the book back to the first and the ring starts again.

There are various ways of realizing bookrings. In the bookray mode, the last participant is expected to release the book into the wild. Then, there are the bookboxes (boxes full of books), which are sent by one member to another according to the model of the bookring.

All of these release modes share effectiveness (people searching for spe-cific books can easily enter the ring and obtain it) and efficiency (books are sent, received, and sent again and every exchange involves an entry in the release journal). As a result, members are sure that they will be able to perform the task they are interested in. However, bookrings are also interesting for free riders, who may easily circulate fake books, to-gether with good ones (within bookboxes, for instance).

Bookrings can equally be seen as a means to develop and maintain rela-tionships. In this sense, they resemble a sort of release challenge, but more practical and oriented to the completion of a high number of ex-changes, rather than the performance of a single, difficult task.

BC members have also developed and coded an altruistic version of the bookring. According to the so-called RABCK (Random Act of BookCrossing Kindness), one member can send out one or more books to another, with-out asking anything in return (neither money for mailing expenses, nor the book, nor other books in exchange). This form of purely altruistic re-lease is very close to releasing the book into the wild, but it is directed towards a specific member. In this case, members interested in higher or-der values (purists, activists, or romantic individualists) can also be found within bookring-like release modes.

Bookrings and related rituals are rapidly developing and this seems to of-fend the sensitivity of committed members; since releasing books into the wild is expensive and insecure, this is still the essence of BC and many members complain about the diffusion of these methods.

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The problem, as in the case of other release rituals, is that the community is not homogeneous and there are many different perspectives from which people look at BC (Kates and Belk 2001): different perspectives, different motivations and different profiles. In some cases, ideological and romantic objectives are more important; in other cases, BC members want to per-form as many registered releases as they can. In yet other cases, they simply look for a book and they do not care about the communal dimen-sion of BC. More recent release methods are effective in promoting and enlarging the community, but they bring within the community new forms of participation and hence they give room to new and different profiles of BC members. As a consequence, conflicts and debates often arise in the forums when these perspectives interact with each other.

BC member profiles

Many different people are involved in BC with varying degrees of commit-ment and identification. In fact, it is very difficult to describe a “typical BC member” other than by referring to very general elements: they love to read and they love books.

Welcome from Fl. I think you will find that we are a di-verse group with at least two things in common - we

love to read and we love books. We don't always agree, but usually we are polite. When someone isn't, just ig-

nore them (B, Forum: Introduce yourself)

BC is a very open and fragmented community, in which everybody can express and put into practice his/her personal ideas about how to deal with BC. All of these profiles are related to the same basic essence, but they seem to bring in very different expectations, motivations, and objec-tives. However, provided that some of the following profiles are often con-flicting with each other, BC still goes on and grows month by month.

Purists and activists are two labels necessary to identify the first profile: it is those members that are interested in the development of the purest form of BC and – at the same time –interested in the emancipatory nature of the system (Kozinets and Handelman 2004). In sum, they both believe in the essence of BC and in the possibility that it will grow like an alterna-tive system of book exchange and distribution.

Admit it. You haven't done much to challenge our cor-porate capitalist society lately, despite your revolutio-

nary leanings. Do not despair. Here is your chance to redeem yourself... Clear those long-forgotten or well-

loved books off the bookshelf and give them to some-one who could really benefit from your good taste: a

complete stranger! Set your old books and your coop-erative spirit free. Exert your intellectual influence on

an international audience. Be subversive. Be a Book-Crosser. Vive la resistance! (J, Forum: Testimonials)

Romantic individualists are those that believe in the pure form of BC, but only for self-fulfilling objectives. Someone labelled it “anonymous purifica-tion” and it deals with an idea of self-improvement, being part of an

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emancipatory process, without any organizational commitment. They do not want to feel challenged or involved, to compete or be integrated into a transformative project.

My previous post was, of course, purely a personal opi-

nion, and as has been pointed out many times before, Bookcrossing is a different experience for different

people. I just prefer wild releasing, simple as that! Cer-tainly no rant or whatever was intended (D, Forum:

Newbies)

Their distance from other objectives and implications is clear in the follow-ing excerpt.

Jokes apart, I still go on in releasing books because I

love it and sometimes you can get some satisfaction back. I do not exchange books at meet-ups, because I

don’t care about the so-called “feed back”. I want to free books because I love the romantic spirit in it. And I

think that perhaps those who get the book don’t want

to register it, or even they can’t. But the most impor-tant thing is that they read the book and may be they

feel joy, interest, or simply companionship for that day (A, Italian mailing list).

Purists and activists and romantic individualists can be classified as “hard core members”, that is, those that are entitled to carry on and preserve the pure and central essence of the community (Schouten and McAlexan-der 1995). Frequently, communities are described in terms of these stereotypes, but in order to ensure equilibrium and operational effective-ness, other forms of participation are necessary.

Friend seekers are looking for people to get in touch with and develop friendly relations, but they are also interested in BC (Granitz and Ward 1996). It seems that the relational motivations are very important, even more than their interest in the very essence of BC.

I love to meet new friends, and this website is one of

the best in this perspective (F, Forum: Introduce your-self)

If I have to guess the weight of different modes of par-ticipation, I should say 80% friendship and 20% other

stuff, even very serious tasks, such as proselytism (M, personal interview)

Free riders are those who exploit genuine or naive Bookcrossers: this happens when they ask for books and do not return them or pay mailing expenses. These behaviors are not rare and they are actively controlled by more expert members, as in the case that follows.

No, you're not obligated to send books on request. While many BCers do enjoy trading, it's purely optional,

and even those who do like to trade are not obliged to agree to every request they get. As for what to do, if

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the people doing the asking are clearly newbies, they

may have found BookCrossing via some other site that

claimed it was a place "where they'll send you free books" [this has happened!], and may not know any

better. In that case, I'd send them one of my patented lengthy basics-of-BookCrossing tutorials, including links

to TexasWren's site (http://www.texaswren.com) which includes a BookCrossing FAQ with helpful hints about

how to figure out who's into trading and who isn't, and how to phrase a polite request (GD, Forum: Newbies)

According to Lois (1999) communities are normative organizations and, as such, they are subject to free riding. This happens when some members participate in a utilitarian fashion, taking advantage of the lack of rules and sanctions, as well as of adequate incentive systems that support al-truistic behaviors. It is difficult to prevent the community from free riding, but, given that they try to exploit newbies and more generous members, they still support the community contributing to the circulation of books, the diffusion of the BC name, etc. Free riders play a similar role in other gift systems (Giesler and Pohlmann 2003).

Competitive players love to follow the history of their books on the web-site. They consider them as characters (like a hero or protagonist of an adventure) they have created and sent out into the world.

With BookCrossing I will be able to find out where my

books have traveled. I just released several books in my local area and am anxiously waiting to see where

they go (W, Forum: Testimonials)

Competitive players are a common profile in many communities and their role is very important in supporting the process; they are responsible for the great bulk of exchange activity and they contribute substantially to re-lease statistics (Thompson and Haytko 1997; Kozinets 2002; O'Guinn and Muniz 2005).

Release modes and the nature of the exchange

To sum up, release rituals can be classified in terms of members’ motiva-tions and, more specifically, in terms of the role they want to play in the community.

It seems that post-modern communities possess a certain degree of inter-nal differentiation as a constitutive element (Kates and Belk 2001). Even in the case of resistant communities conflicts and debates are common. In this sense, Kozinets (2002) supports the idea that a significant level of dynamism, freedom, openness and exchange is needed in order to provide the sense of both belonging and individual liberty.

From another perspective, Granitz and Ward (1996) observe that more committed and integrated members are those that know better the es-sence and the operations of the system. As such they act as “arbiters of opinion”; by definition, this implies that a number of other members are needed, whose opinions deserve to be “arbitrated”. The less committed,

15

newbies, and “lurkers”, all with their personal motivations for participa-tion, create a sort of arena in which more committed members can play their roles (Schouten and McAlexander 1995).

In peer-to-peer systems, differentiation and, in particular, the relationship between those who support the system and those who exploit it, is critical (Becker and Clement 2006). It is true that differentiation is natural, but within certain limits, otherwise the community runs the risk of declining.

The presence of four diverse release (families of) rituals demonstrates the flexibility of the community and its ability to adapt to different needs and motivations with different operational and organizational solutions. In fact, every release ritual is mainly associated with one (or few) member pro-file(s).

Moreover, the nature of the exchange in each of the release rituals seems highly differentiated2:

• Releasing books into the wild fits into the pure gift-giving model de-scribed above, with elements of both agapic love (Belk and Coon 1993) and charity (Fischer, Gainer et al. 1996);

• Meet-ups are expressions of social exchange, where gifts and gift-giving are symbolic instruments for developing and settling friendly re-lationships (Weiner 1992);

• Bookrings are mixed forms of giving, in which BC members aim partly at developing relationships and partly at obtaining personal and in-strumental objectives. It could be defined as a “collective form of bar-ter” in which the economic dimension of the exchange seems the most important (Belk and Coon 1993; Larsen and Watson 2001);

• OBCZ release cannot be associated with one paradigm, because it can be used from different perspectives. In fact, it is a form of anonymous giving, but the giver is almost certain that the gift will be received by someone, most likely another BC member. Moreover, when releasing, the giver has the opportunity of getting a new book in “exchange”. Fi-nally, the OBCZ can be seen as one of the instruments that purists, ac-tivists, and romantic individualists use for their emancipatory projects. Different dimensions are then present within the same setting.

Final remarks

To sum up, as in other forms of consumption communities, BC presents a certain level of internal differentiation and fragmentation (Kozinets 2002). In particular, members that belong to different profiles behave in different ways, according to different motivations, and they show very different de-grees of commitment towards the essence of BC (Granitz and Ward

2 It is not easy to integrate the diverse and subjective classifications of gift-giving availa-ble in the literature. For the purpose of the following discussion, the four dimensions identified by Larsen and Watson will be linked to those by Belk and Coon as follows: eco-nomic and functional dimensions will belong to the economic exchange, while social and expressive ones will belong to the social exchange model.

16

1996). In some cases, it seems that the core of the community activity (romanticism and emancipation) can be of secondary importance, com-pared to individualistic (fun and individual gratification) and social bonding objectives.

As in other consumption communities, members can take different posi-tions and play different roles (Kozinets 1999; Kates and Belk 2001; Kates 2002). This means that the community cannot be described according to one of the theories of gift-giving; pure forms of gift-giving have to be con-sidered together with more functional aspects of social and economic ex-change (Sherry 1983; Belk and Coon 1993; Fischer, Gainer et al. 1996). Moreover, it has to be interpreted from the perspective of communal gift-giving (Hollenbeck, Peters et al. 2006) and gift systems (Giesler 2006). Finally, BC looks like a peer-to-peer system in that its members partici-pate in different ways: some are more committed and supportive, others are more selfish and interested only in “getting the right stuff” (Huang 2005; Becker and Clement 2006).

To explain how this community works, it is necessary to describe the vari-ous elements that contribute to its functioning and the relations between them. In this case, it seems that altruism and solidarity (Giesler 2006; Hemetsberger 2006) are not enough - a certain amount of selfish, low committed, social and fun oriented members are needed (Becker and Clement 2006).

As a consequence, BC cannot be associated with one of the several ste-reotypes corresponding to the different roles that members can play with-in it. It is a complex form of gift-giving community in which diverse and even conflicting stances interact and contribute to support the system.

This condition could be extended to other forms of communal gift-giving and even to other forms of communal consumption. Recent analyses have been performed of Wiki systems (Kozinets 2007; Okoli and Oh 2007; Ped-dibhotla and Subramani 2007) and further research is necessary into the different motivations, profiles and behaviors of the members of such communities. Other forms of communal consumption and sharing also de-serve further attention from this perspective: Wayn, Couchsurfing, Ho-meExchange.

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