When I first heard about BookCrossing, I thought it was a great idea and I was so excited to try it myself. This week, I finally had the chance to!

As they explain on their website:

BookCrossing is earth-friendly, and gives you a way to share your books, clear your shelves, and conserve precious resources at the same time. Through our own unique method of recycling reads, BookCrossers give life to books. A book registered on BookCrossing is ready for adventure.

Leave it on a park bench, a coffee shop, at a hotel on vacation. Share it with a friend or tuck it onto a bookshelf at the gym — anywhere it might find a new reader! What happens next is up to fate, and we never know where our books might travel. Track the book’s journey around the world as it is passed on from person to person.

We followed the directions on the site to register our new mystery book, Grave Doubts. We decided to release it at Hart House, since it’s mentioned in the book and the main character takes frequent walks down Harbord Street and University circle.

We left lots of information on the books to lead them back to the BookCrossing site and here, at Defining Canada. We’re excited to see the journey that our books will have, and hope that whoever finds them will let us know.

Since Hart House is such a stunning building, we brought along our new camera and made a short film to promote our new BookCrossing experiment and the Quin and Morgan detective series.

What do you think?

Since we’re all so enthusiastic about our new toy, you can expect some video updates in the coming weeks. We have a lot of fun ideas planned for you: author interviews, event footage, book trailers, videoblogs – and a few surprises too!

As always, we also want to hear from you!

• What would you love to see us do with our new camera?
• What book trailers have you seen and loved?
• What interests you about books and publishing that you’d like to hear more about?

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