Better World Books Teams Up with BookCrossing.com

A Match to Set the Book Community on Fire:
Better World Books Teams Up with BookCrossing.com

San Francisco, Calif. (March 19, 2009) - Better World Books, the socially conscious online book seller announces that it has teamed up with the popular community booksite, BookCrossing.com, an online movement encouraging readers to stop being shelf-ish with their books by giving these often hoarded treasures freedom to travel the world and change lives.

With shared missions of finding new life for old reads and helping to increase global literacy, together, Better World Books and BookCrossing will ensure that no book is left behind. Each book purchased through Better World Books and registered by BookCrossing will be able to affect positive world change through this collaboration. The two green companies have parallel philosophies and seek to save books from landfills recognizing that a good book is a terrible thing to waste. The partnership's congruent mission and philosophy of recycling books between readers achieves several goals with each and every book donated, gifted, purchased and tracked-the kind of impact and return that readers and environmentalists will be sure to applaud.

The first step in the relationship establishes BookCrossing as an affiliate of Better World Books. BookCrossing will promote Better World Books as the preferred source of books purchased by its members. Both organizations look forward to deepening their relationship over time.

"We're delighted to partner with BookCrossing, a site that caters to a shared audience of socially responsible readers. By pairing Better World's vast collection of books and triple bottom-line business model with BookCrossing's devoted and generous community of book lovers, we intend to get even more people throughout the world reading, reusing and recycling books," said David Murphy, President and CEO of Better World Books.

"Better World Books, like BookCrossing, offers new life to books through innovative alternatives to recycling. The thing that attracts to me Better World is that I know how my consumption is being channeled. We share a common goal of making a difference through literature and reading. We are thrilled about this unique opportunity to join together and move the needle on literacy around the world," said BookCrossing Cofounder and CEO, Bruce Pedersen. "We hope to help change the world one book at a time."

ABOUT BETTER WORLD BOOKS
Better World Books (www.BetterWorldBooks.com) is a for-profit social enterprise that collects and sells books online to fund literacy initiatives worldwide. With more than two million new and used titles in stock, Better World Books is a self-sustaining company that balances the social, economic and environmental values of its stakeholders. Since its founding in 2003, the Mishawaka, Indiana-based company has raised over $5.6 million for its non-profit literacy and library partners; diverted more than 20 million pounds of books from landfills; achieved 6,000 tons of carbon offsets through carbon-neutral shipping, and created more than 200 full-time jobs with meaningful benefits.

ABOUT BOOKCROSSING
BookCrossing.com, the world's largest free book club is anonymous and safe and seeks to make the whole world a library. Winning 2 Webby Awards (the Oscars of the Internet) in 2005 for the "Best Community" and "Best Social Networking" site on the web, BookCrossing boasts an ever-growing membership of over 750,000 passionate readers and receives about 25 million hits a month with its membership having "registered and released" almost 5.5 million books in 160 countries.