paperback swap
If you have books laying around that you don’t necessarily want to keep, here is a great way to exchange them for books that you do want! When someone requests a book you have, you send it to them (paying the postage) and receive one credit which you can then spend on a book of your choice, which is sent to you (the sender paying the postage).
Depending on the books you have and the books you want, a local used bookstore like Bookworm might still be a better value since you don’t have to pay the postage (which Paperback Swap says is around $2), but if you have cheap, popular paperbacks that you’d get less than a dollar for at Bookworm (Bookworm pays a quarter of the cover price, unless they are currently overstocked on it already; and when there is no printed cover price they often will not accept the book at all) and you want hard-to-find titles or more pricey titles (the books I often want at Bookworm are $4-$5), you can arrange bargain deals. Plus, you can search with a keyboard and mouse rather than flipping through shelves of twaddle to find the buried gem.
Plus, you get 2 free credits after you list your first 10 titles, so that increases the average value of your deals considerably. And you can keep a list of books you want and have them notify you when they become available for trade or even have them automatically make the deal for you if you have stored credits.
I offloaded pretty much all the books I don’t want at Bookworm before we moved, so I haven’t gotten up to 10 listed yet, but a browse through the Friend’s of the Library sale section (paperbacks for 25-cents) is in order, I believe. :)
