How to dress a book, part 1

I sat down to register some books this morning, and my camera was sitting next to the computer, so I thought I’d try a little photographic demonstration of how I get my books ready to go out in the big wide world:

So, here’s our book about to be dressed – it’s one of the ones I got from Lytteltonwitch’s garage (no, I *still* haven’t finished registering them all – she gave me a *lot* of books!), The Return of the Time Machine by Egon Friedell. It’s a bit tatty looking, but all the pages are present and correct, so a good candidate for Bookcrossing.

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First I need to get a BCID for the book. So I go to the Registration Page at Bookcrossing.com, and enter the book’s details. It’s an old book without an ISBN, so I have to type in all the details by hand.

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The Bookcrossing database generates a unique BCID for the book, and the book now appears here on my Bookcrossing bookshelf. (Note that in this and following pictures, I’ve blurred out the first three digits of the BCID, so that nobody can “cheat” and make a journal entry on the book without actually having caught it.)

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Now I write the BCID and the Bookcrossing URL inside the back cover, and stamp the page with my Bookcrossing stamp.

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Another stamp, and another note of the BCID on an inside page (you don’t *have* to write the BCID in so many places, but I like to reduce the chances of the BCID being lost if a cover is ripped off or something).

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Inside the front cover, where it’s most likely to be seen, I put a Bookcrossing label (in this case I’ve used one of the decorative ones sold by the supply store, but it’s easy enough to print off your own).

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And finally, I strengthen that fraying spine with some clear tape, and put a bookcrossing sticker on the outside, so it’s immediately obvious that this is a Bookcrossing book. These stickers are ones we were given by the organisers of the Sydney BC-AUS convention, but again, it’s easy to print your own.

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And that’s it – the book is now registered and labelled, and ready to be bookcrossed. Except, of course, that if I was about to wild release it, I’d have to add a few things… but that can wait for Part 2.

Currently reading: The Cat Who Could Read Backwards by Lilian Jackson Braun

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