How to save on books
Ideally, every book you want to read would be available at the library and you could get them all for free. Reality hits, though, and sometimes the book isn’t available, and sometimes you want to have a book to keep.
Enter PaperBackSwap. Clearly it won’t solve all your book woes, but if you’re looking for paperbacks, you should definitely check it out. Here’s how it works: you list your paperbacks (the ones you’re willing to share!) and when someone wants one, you ship it to them. You pay the shipping, but when you request a book from someone else, they cover shipping. You get one “get a book” credit for each book you send out, plus three credits when you join and list nine books (you’ll get credits for each of the nine books, too). Send your books via media mail and you’ll be paying on average between $1 and $2 for each book. You might be able to find “a paperback” cheaper than that locally, but probably not “that paperback,” so use it when you want something specific.
Does anybody know of something similar to this online? I’m wondering if this is being done for other things, too.
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Not as helpful as the site mentioned in the article, but Amazon.com sells used books too. I will add that many times any savings are off-set by shipping and handling charges.
That’s definitely true. I just ordered a ton of books this evening for Christmas presents. I think 3 of them were new from Amazon and the other 9 were used from sellers. Even with the $3.49 shipping, I made out like a bandit because most of them were priced at $0.01 apiece—a bunch of over-available Tom Clancy hardbacks.
The best part is that I paid for the whole order with gift certificates from answering surveys and credit card rewards.