Posted by Sundi Hayes in 
Although there is nothing better than the smell of a new book I can rarely force myself to pay the price for one! (Wait, I love that sleeping newborn smell too, so there might be a tie for first place!) I visit our library a lot and thankfully the whole family loves going there too. I get a lot of fictional books from my family members…funny how a book will start on one side of the family and end up on the other!
I made a really great find the other day and, because it is Return the Borrowed Books Week, I thought I’d share it. (Seriously I didn’t make it up!) Of course you know it has to be free, right? Well, right now it is anyway. The site owners say it might not be that way forever. For now, the only thing it will cost you is the price of postage.
Paper Back Swap is the away-from-the-library home of many people. The system is based on credits…you get 2 credits for posting 10 of your books when you start an account and you get another point for every book a member successfully receives from you. The best thing about Paper Back Swap is that you can print postage right from home and drop it in the box! You rarely have to go to the post office.
I’m amazed at how many different books they have in all different categories! The stats on the front page says there are over 3 million books available. Now you can’t beat that. How about an example from the genre search?
Under Business & Investing you’ll find 15 subcategories:
Biographies & Primers
Business Life
By Publisher
Careers
Economics
Finance
General
Industries & Professions
International
Investing
Management & Leadership
Marketing & Sales
Personal Finance
Reference
Small Business & Entrepreneurship
Each of these subcategories have even more subcategories. Like under Management & Leadership you’ll find:
Consolidation & Merger
Decision-Making & Problem Solving
Industrial
Leadership
Management
Management Science
Motivational
Negotiating
Operations Research
Organizational Change
Planning & Forecasting
Pricing
Production & Operations
Quality Control
Systems & Planning
Teams
Total Quality Management
Training
It seems pretty thorough to me!
Another great way to search is by member. If you find a member who has similar book tastes as you…go straight to their list to see if it contains something else you’d like to have. Don’t start thinking this is just for business-types! There are kids books, text books, cook books, books on alternative life styles and even fiction – the list goes on. If you know exactly what you want you can search by ISBN or title!
You can even swap CDs and swap DVDs!
Looking for small ways to go green? This looks like a GREAT place to start!
Nibbling away -
Sundi
