I've heard about these book swapping clubs, and decided to check into PaperBackSwap. I joined, then browsed around and clicked a couple of books onto my reminder list; then I saw one that looked very intriguing and put it on my wish list. I guess the “wish list” is when the book isn't listed on the site at all, but you wish it was. The book became available the next day, but before you can participate (any further than signing up and putting books on your reminder or wish list) you have to list ten books.
I listed my ten books. One wasn't in their system, so I had to enter it manually. There is an option to scan the cover and upload the image. I was in a hurry and did a straight scan without cropping and uploaded it. I thought it looked fine but the next day I got an email that my image had been rejected and that I needed to crop it. I didn't realize they were so picky, and the really annoying thing is usually I'm very picky myself, and usually wouldn't have let it go like that but my computer needed to be restarted (memory resources were too low to open Photoshop) and I was already up after my bedtime so I just let it go as it was.
I have already had two of my books requested. I've shipped one and am shipping another one today. Three of my books don't have images available so I will scan those all in this weekend and CROP THEM and upload them.
I had “lister remorse” when the first book requested was FlyLady's Sink Reflections. I do not even want to look on half.com and see how much I could have made by listing the book there.
Then that also made me start thinking these maybe some people in these clubs are getting books in order to resell them!! But they really wouldn't make too much money doing that since after your initial startup points you can only make points by swapping books.
I have plenty of books laying around that I need to find new homes for… I really should just box them up and take them all to Goodwill or Savers. But I'm going to try out this book swapping thing for a bit and see how quickly I can get books moved out of my house. I guess the cheapest and most efficient way to get rid of this extra clutter would be to box them up and take them to the thrift store, since it does cost $2.38 to ship each one by Media Mail. Oh dear, looking at it that way, I feel stupid now!! LOL. Well, I'll see how it goes for a bit.
Are you part of any book swapping online clubs? Are you with PaperBackSwap or another club?
Yours Truly,
I use PBS and Bookmooch. I’ve used them for years and absolutely love the site. While I can’t say it’s great for getting rid of clutter, it’s a great way to take books you’re not reading and get other books in exchange. I use their PBS shipping labels to get automatic credit for my shipments. Plus it’s easy.
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Mrs. Accountability Reply:
August 14th, 2009 at 5:06 am
Hi Megan, so does it cost anything extra to use the PBS shipping labels? It’s around $.50 to use the PaperBackSwap label. I can see that it would be a lot easier to just print out a label! I’m glad to hear you have had such a nice experience with the book swapping. Thanks for visiting and commenting!
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I haven’t used any sites like that. I don’t read as much as I’d like to – too busy with small children and a husband who works nights. When I do get a new book to read it’s usually from the library. I’ve pretty much stopped buying books altogether, unless its childrens books. We only have a small number of books in our house and we intend on keeping those. Most are hardcover Stephen King and Vince Flynn books and the like so I don’t have anything to swap even if I wanted to!
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Hi Cynthia… ah yes… small children… when mine were little, the only “adult” books I read were parenting books. I attended La Leche League and I went through their entire little library in a couple of years. I learned a lot and I’m really glad that I did it because I really, really needed to learn how to be a good parent since I didn’t get very good modeling from my mom and stepfather. I was DETERMINED to parent differently than I’d been parented, and I knew in order to do that I’d have to read, read, read and read some more. Now on the other hand, I did also read TONS of children’s books to my babies. That is one thing I can credit my mom with giving all of her children a love of reading because she started reading to us when we were little babies. I took my children to the library every single week and we rotated out our stacks of books. I read books every single night… that is another thing I really loved, the peacefulness of reading books aloud to my children while they drifted off to sleep. Sometimes we’d read upwards of ten books a night. I am also a Stephen King fan, have never read anything by Vince Flynn. I’ll check him out. Thanks for visiting and commenting!
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