PaperBackSwap.com: Almost Free Books, Pay Only the Cost of Postage

Libraries have always provided a wonderful free resource for book lovers. But sometimes you want a copy of a book for your bookshelf at home. The cost of buying books at local retailers can really add up, especially for voracious readers.

Many localities have good local used book stores, but it isn't always easy to find the exact book you are looking for. There are some on-line discount sites such as www.bookcloseouts.com that offer a very limited selection of books at greatly discounted prices. And of course www.amazon.com carries almost any book you could possibly want at a slightly discounted price from the suggested retail price.

Now book lovers have another option that seems almost certainly the cheapest way to purchase a book. It does have it's drawbacks and limitations, but www.Paperbackswap.com provides a wonderful, inexpensive way for book lovers to expand their collections. The mostly free on-line site offers a way to swap your unwanted books with other readers for the books you really want. This simple, but very ingenious, idea is a wonderful way to obtain books at an extremely low cost.

The name, www.PaperBackSwap.com, is a little bit misleading because you can swap not only paperbacks but hardbacks as well as audio-books. Also remember that when you swap one of your books or receive a book you requested-the book becomes the property of the person receiving the book. This site is not for swapping in the sense of loaning a book to someone and then getting it back like a library. The books you receive are yours to keep or read and repost if you like.

One of the best features of www.PaperBackSwap.com is that for the most part you are not actually swapping books with other users in the sense of swapper number one swapping a book with swapper number two by having swapper number two send them a book in return. The site works in credits, which makes the site much simpler and makes it much easier for successful swapping. It take the matching process of matching swappers with exact wish lists swapping with just each other and eliminates it.