Books for Barter

by Hanaa, March 23, 2009 at 5:29pm

After I finished writing my graduate thesis in 2006, I stopped reading pretty much anything denser than a magazine. Sure, there was the unauthorized Tom Cruise biography I managed to read over the course of six months (don’t judge), but for the most part, books incited sudden bursts of panic I thought I’d never overcome. But then I took a book—a real book with chapters and everything—with me on my beachy vacation over the holidays and was finally able to reassociate reading with relaxation. Since then, I’ve been reading quite a bit, but I’ve found a dilemma: I don’t particularly care to browse through libraries or bookstores and also don’t like spending money on new books that more than likely will end up collecting dust on my shelves after being read just once. Let alone the fact that few books have much recycled content to them, thus virgin trees are being cut down for my literary benefit.

Then I found Swaptree.  On Swaptree, you list all the books you have that you no longer want, plus all the books you do want, and then by the power of the internets (or maybe Grayskull), swaps are set up so that you send X book to someone and someone else sends you Y book! And you can even print out the postage and address right off the website (average is about $2 to send a book). I really like this system , having already completed three trades, and have been pleased with the results. Plus there’s the added excitement of having stuff in the mail you actually want (as opposed to junk mail).

I encourage you all to check out this new barter system!