Tuesday, December 25, 2007

Book Swapping or Trading Services

I just joined Bookmooch today. Over 2,500 people had bookmarked it via their del.icio.us accounts, over and above all of the other book-swapping services I've been able to find via Google; so I figured it had to have some validity.

With as much money as I shell out on books, and the speed with which I plow through them, I'm really interested to discover how well this service works. I'll let you know when I do.

For a while, I was hot and heavy into the Bookcrossing phenomenon, which really is a fun concept, but your luck in getting hold of a book you've had on your reading list via Bookcrossing is kind of skewed, if you go about it using this service. Still, it's fun to come across one of these registered finds, especially if you are in the market for a new title to add to your reading repertoire.

The only other service I found to be fairly popular was Bookins, and I haven't looked into that one very much.

I'd be interested to hear from other readers - how do you get your books? I imagine like many of us, you have a card for your local library branch or, when the mood strikes, you hit up Amazon or your favorite brick-and-mortar store; but I would love to get recommendations for alternate means to satisfy my book cravings. As for myself, I've discovered AbeBooks to be the best shopping site offering the most reasonable prices on titles I want to buy, as well as a good resource for out-of-print books.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I just found a great site for trading local college books. Have you all heard about Fast Book Swap? The site is www.fastbookswap.com, it looks great and they are having a $500 book scholarship! I signed up I hope I get it! It is a new site so I may win it the next drawing! You can swap, buy, or sell you college textbooks, for totally free!