Book Swapping: Recycling Old Books, Saving Money

Most of my readers are probably like me. They love books. Bloggers tend to read more books than others, and Christian bloggers tend to have an insatiable craving for theology books new and old. My problem has always been how to afford books. Charles Spurgeon said something like “sell your shirt and buy books”, in his book to ministerial students. No one wants to buy my old shirts, however!

Well, as you can tell, I’ve taken to doing book reviews as a way to get books. But that can be a lot of work. I’ve posted 20 book reviews this year so far, and not everyone is as fanatical about books to do that! A while back I stumbled onto another way to get books inexpensively. It’s called book swapping.

The basic idea is I make my old books available to others. They select a book I’ve listed as available, and then I get notified. I mail the book to them and they let the book swapping website know when they get it. For every book sent and received, I get a credit for a free book.   The postage is paid by the sender of the book, so I only pay for the postage going out on books I send, not the ones I receive. It boils down to getting decent used books for 2-4 dollars each.

Having explained the basic idea, let me recommend a few options for you when it comes to book swapping.

PaperbackSwap.com is my first choice for book swapping. It has by far the widest selection of books with almost 5 million books listed. It also has the best design and is the easiest site to use. You can scroll through available books and easily search by genre or title or author. When you list your first ten books, you get 2 free credits to use for receiving books. Books cost 1 credit each and for every book you send to someone, you get a credit in exchange. Plus if you sign up others to the site, you get additional credits.

BookMooch.com works similarly but you get tenths of a credit for additional things like posting books and sending feedback within the time limit given. The navigation is not as user-friendly but the site works pretty much the same.

I have traded books with both PaperbackSwap and Bookmooch and have received a variety of different conditions on the book. I don’t think it matters which site you use as far as what condition books you’ll receive. I’ve had stellar books and some in poor condition. It can vary but they do recommend books listed to describe their condition. The other big difference between these sites is that PaperbackSwap offers a printable label that works well for sending a book that is not much bigger than a paperback. You can even wrap the book in the paper label and send just like that. Otherwise if the book is larger you can send it in a package and cut out the label and affix it to the packabe. BookMooch doesn’t offer that.

Goodreads.com, is another site whose primary purpose is to post your virtual library. I use it for posting book reviews and books on my “to read” list. It now has recently started bookswapping with a slightly different approach. The person wanting one of your books will pay the postage for it. You just ship them the book on their dime. Once you ship 10 books you get a free credit for any book available for swapping that you’d like. You can of course pay for the shipping on any book you’d like that is available prior to getting that free credit. One catch is GoodReads adds a hanling fee on all books shipped to help them keep up the site. Books will average between $3.50 and $4.50 per Goodreads, which is still a good deal. I haven’t used this feature yet with Goodreads, but it would also be a site to check for good books that may not be listed on the other sites.

I’ve used book swapping to get hard to find books and also to hunt for inexpensive commentaries or other such books. If you are on these sites, let me know as our books may be of mutual interest. I list several Christian books at these sites. My available books at PaperbackSwap are listed here, and at BookMooch are here. On both of these sites you can follow me so you’re aware of new books I post as available for swapping.

If you’d like to check out a bookswapping site, I’d recommend signing up with PaperbackSwap.com. You can use the link below (click on the button) so I’ll get a credit for pointing you their way.