We all know the typical ways to obtain books on the cheap – garage sales, thrift stores, used bookstores, library sales, friends relatives etc. Some of us even know about the used homeschooling curriculum and books yahoo groups, available in many different flavours and varieties depending upon your learning philosophy preference. And some of us are becoming aware of the benefits of book trading websites.

There are benefits of a book trading website over the conventional methods of obtaining books at a reasonable price. You don’t have to leave home to conduct your search. If you are looking for a specific title, going from garage sale to garage sale, bookstore to bookstore, thriftstore to thriftstore is a very ineffective use of your time. With a book trading website you can establish a ‘wishlist’ that will notify you if a book you desire becomes available. You can also search online to see what titles are currently available.

The savings in fuel to drive around and find books, and your time is immense! You do still need to visit the post office with your books for trade, and pay for the postage, but I have found that I can often obtain books for $2 – $4 taking into account the postage costs that it took to obtain the ‘points’ (credits I can spend towards books in the system). While this isn’t as affordable as garage sale finds, let’s be honest – how often can we find the titles we REALLY want at a garage or library sale? And when the book is sent you don’t have to pay for the postage, the sender ships it to you for points, and the shipping is free for you!

I still feel that garage, library sales etc. still have their place (I love to keep my eye out for books of interest there), but we are rurally located, and rarely make it to a locale with used books for our perusal, so this is a perfect solution for us. We need to go to the post office weekly to pick up our mail, as our location doesn’t have postal delivery, so that is no additional expense for us.

You will need some books you would like to send away to others in exchange for points to get started. Some sites also accept magazines, cd’s, dvd’s etc. for trade. The more items you send out, the more credits you obtain in the system. Some systems also give credit for listing books, so if you list 10 books, and you are awarded 0.1 points for them, you can request a book for 1 point, neat hey!? Every system works differently though, so do investigate to find out more details!

I am currently only a member of BookMooch (books and magazines only), as they are open to international users, and I am in Canada – users however can choose to ship domestically, ask first, or internationally. They are also completely free, you only pay for your postage on outgoing books at the post office. You can find my inventory here, in caes I have any books that you would like me to send to you through BookMooch! I have received 332 books, given away 153, have 6 more books on the way, 2 I need to send out, and 1 in transit. That may seem like a lot of books, but when we came to Christ I heavily weeded our library, and choose new Christian reading materials. Some of the books I weeded we had to burn due to their openly pagan nature. Others were only questionable in moral/spiritual value – these went to BookMooch and the used bookstore. God bless BookMooch for allowing us to overhaul our library affordably!

Here is a listing of other websites, many country/media specific, some are complicated and charge a bit of money etc. so be discerning while browsing:

Bookins.com
Whatsonmybookshelf.com
Titletrader.com
Readitswapit.co.uk
Readersunited.com
Swapclub.co.nz
Boekenruilen.nl
Bookswapper.de
Swapthing.com
Swapsimple.com
Bookhopper.co.uk
Frugalreader.com
Paperbackswap.com
Swaptree.com

Have fun trading books!