Swapping My Paperbacks

Last weekend I joined PaperBackSwap, a site where you can list books you’d be willing to send away to a loving home in exchange for credit toward a new (to you) book for yourself. I had heard about this before on my crush site Lifehacker, but it was the article about book-swapping websites in my newest issue of Bust that really got me thinking:

Who has room for a personal library in a studio apartment, or the deltoids to transport so much reading material with every change of address?

Swapping Lit, June/July issue

I’ll be moving in a few months, and although I’m not Thoreau-ish enough to get rid of the entire overflowing collection in my bookcase, I thought it was time to trade in a few things I’ll never read again instead of letting them sit on the shelves.

So far I’ve sent away four of the initial ten books I posted, which isn’t bad I think, considering that I just signed up. The problem now is that I’ve got four credits burning a hole in my Internet-pocket, and none of the books on my wish list are available. Ah well — this is a good exercise in patience, a virtue in short supply for me sometimes.

The verdict? PaperBackSwap seems pretty awesome if you want to get rid of some stuff and then have the used-bookstore experience of browsing for nothing in particular, but if you’re searching for a specific title, you might have to just pony up the cash at Amazon Marketplace or elsewhere.