Bookcrossing is a wonderful site – though I have not released any books into the wild for quite some time because I now give them to my students.
Basically you tag a book with your book crossing label and ID, release it into the wild, and you can see who picks it up, what they think of it and whether they release it back into the wild. You can leave books on park benches, trains, in coffee shops – anywhere really. You can follow books from all over the world in their new journeys and see where they go. At any given time, there are 11 million book crossing books in circulation.
Some critics argue that using book crossing will cause the sales of books to drop, and compare this to illegally downloading or copying films. Personally I don’t agree because one does not copy anything, merely recycle it. And of all the threats facing book sales, this is definitely not one of them. If anything, it has made me read more because the books I have found have caused me to go out and buy more by the same author.
Alison’s books are somewhere on the London underground:
http://alison-morton.com/2013/05/29/inceptio-is-a-book-on-the-underground/
And the New York Metro:
http://alison-morton.com/2013/08/29/inceptio-in-new-york/
That’s amazing!