Annie Frisbie, the Superfast Reader, sends me information about a scheme called BookMooch, a simple book exchange program. After joining, you list the books you want to give away on the site, send them to someone who asks for them (for which you get points), and then use your points to order books from other people.

Sounds like a conspiracy to take money out of writers’ pockets, say I.

You know, it’s one of the ironies of life. Writers depend on the sale of new books to make a living. We only get paid for that first sale. When I shop at Half Price Books (as I do more than anywhere else), and buy used books, I’m not showing solidarity with my comrades in labor, but profiting only the carrion birds of the bookstore.

However, as a midlist author, I just don’t have a lot of money to spend on new books (which are, I think, generally overpriced). Thus do I cut mine own economic throat.

A friend just told me she found a signed copy of The Year of the Warrior in a used bookstore.

I don’t really seriously imagine that everybody who’s bought a book from me at a Viking event, and got it autographed, fell in love with it and wouldn’t be parted from it.

But it still rankles.

Take physic, pomp!

The big dogs at Borders Group have developed a company network to get select books into the hands of their employees in order for them to recommend them to local shoppers. It’s the same idea you might see at a small, independent bookstore. You buy a couple things or shop there regularly, and the store owner says, “Hey, have you heard of On the Corner of Bitter and Sweet? It’s debut novel, like the kind you seem to enjoy, and I love it.” That’s called hand-selling. Publishers have given Borders credit for making the four previously selected hand-sellers into best-sellers.

“Online retailers are recording hundreds of thousands of dollars in sales of mugs and sweats, buttons and bumper stickers, with much of the proceeds going toward organizing the tax-day tea parties, takeoffs on the original 1773 protest of British taxes,” reports Fox News. The head of Patriot Depot, Jay Taylor, says they’ve been so busy, he doesn’t know what their profit is.

Taylor is partnering with the Augusta, Ga.-based Reagan.org to send tens of thousands of tea bags north to Washington for a massive tax day tea dump. Though Reagan.org is asking for about $1 per bag, they estimate they’ll end up losing money in the transaction.

“What we figure is that we’ll probably end up losing a little bit of money on it,” said Joshua Bolin, executive director of Reagan.org, who told FOXNews.com that his organization accepted requests to send 30,000 tea bags packing in just the first two days of its promotion.

Now, can I brew you a cup of tea?