Cheap Reads: Swapping, Selling & Renting Books

Book lovers lament that "no one reads anymore," but four websites are proving that millions of people worldwide do still crave the tangible tome — they're just getting smarter about how they acquire them.

We're not just talking about Google eBooks and Amazon Kindles here, we're talking about real, book-smell-smelling books with a spine and the seriously active social communities who love and are willing to share them — both in review and in the pulp.

PaperBackSwap.com
The original book swapping site, Paperback Swap has been serving up bookworm bargains since 2004. What started as a private friends and family service has grown to over 200,000 active members worldwide (out of more than half a million total members), sharing over 4 million books, and has spawned sister sites for CDs and DVDs appropriately named SwapACD.com and SwapADVD.com.

The "a ha" moment came when founder Richard Pickering was traveling all the time for his previous job. "Every airport I would go through, I'd buy a book, and I accumulated a large library of gently read — exactly once — books," Pickering said. "I had a massive collection, about four or five boxes, and took them to a used bookstore. The proprietor pulled out about four or five books and said, 'These are the only ones I need.' I couldn't understand it. I took them home and my neighbors scooped them up by the handful."

The service is simple and efficient, allowing members to sign up for an account and then list each of the books they want to swap by simply entering the ISBN number and Paperback Swap does the rest. New members receive two credits towards a future swap for the first 10 books they list, and once they've entered their home address into their profile, Paperback Swap holds activity until verification from the US Postal Service to ensure nothing gets lost in the mail. After a swap has been successfully arranged through PaperBack Swap, the owner of the book can print an exact book-size label, generated by Paperback Swap using the dimensions from the ISBN, that includes the receiver of the book's home address already on it. Members can opt for a premium service that includes pre-paid postage or they can pay for it themselves at the post office, making the service itself entirely free.

Simple, right? Downright addictive is more like it. When I tried it out in our own office, I had 12 books listed in under seven minutes, and within 30 minutes, I had my first swap request and another pending verification of a member's available credits. "A typical member will save on average $300 to $400 per year using just Paperback Swap," Pickering said. "If they're active and use all three sister sites, they can save thousands of dollars per year. We have members who have converted their entire family over to our sites instead of buying, borrowing, or renting books. This is real money, not pretend money — not off the cost of a new book, but off a USED book. Our members have saved over $14M since we launched and that number is growing."

To compare the numbers for yourself, check out the Pulse of PBS, one of the many cool, free features on PaperBackSwap.com helping book lovers everywhere stay on budget and save money while enjoying life.

BookSwim.com
Like many a college student, recent grad, or otherwise cash-poor bookworm, George Burke has logged some serious hours lurking in Barnes & Noble cafes, reading book after book for free — and, luckily for him, that lead him and his co-founder to the idea for BookSwim. "Realizing the value of the books we'd burned through and that we didn't pay a cent for them — and looking around the cafe at others reading books just to put them back — it struck us that THAT was the business plan we should start," Burke said.

BookSwim launched in May of 2007 with a similar rental model to Netflix, only for books instead of movies. Plans start at $9.95 per month, a "one book at a time" plan for occasional readers, and BookSwim also offers a de facto try-before-you-buy service, allowing members to purchase (at a discount) the books they've read and loved enough to own.

"We take care of all the shipping and the books arrive directly at your home, so there's no need to pay for gas or postage," Burke said. "I think most of our members are readers who wish they had more time, but because of everything that's going on in their lives, they have a tough time justifying to themselves the time spent going to a library or bookstore. So they rely on BookSwim to rent most if not all of their reading material, whether classics or new releases, eliminating the need to schedule an extra trip around store hours. And if time is money, well, we practically make all of our readers millionaires."

Buying secondhand or vintage gifts or acquiring things by swapping is soaring in popularity for some people — and is actually expected to increase this year, according to BrandWeek — so sites like BookSwim are trying unique approaches for luring in holiday shoppers, like "free $10 gift cards to friends and family." For more information on their special offers and their partnership with Restaurant.com, check out BookSwim.com.

GoodReads.com
The biggest worldwide social network for bookworms, Goodreads is a completely user-generated community for sharing book reviews, which has grown to "over 2.7 million registered members, who have added over 70 million books to their shelves" since 2006, according to founder Otis Chandler. "Our members have read [and reviewed] over 2 million distinct titles."

GoodReads is definitely the most "web 2.0" of the book sites, providing seamless integration of your Goodreads profile, your email contacts, and your Facebook page, so you can connect and share book recommendations with friends, family members, and colleagues, "as well as keeping and organizing all the books you've ever read...keep track of what you want to read, keep a wish list, or even keep a list of books you actually own," says Chandler. "Many book lovers, myself included, will go straight to a person's bookshelf when they walk into their house and start checking it out. What you read says a lot about a person. Goodreads enables you to have a virtual bookshelf that includes anything you've ever read, and because of that, it ends up being a better way to discover books."

Goodreads book swapping just launched for members last week (currently in beta trial) last week, so expect swapping to become more popular with members soon. Instead of a credit system, like most other swap sites, GoodReads members will get Karma Points for trading a book — they have no real value, and are all on an honor system. "If you request a few books, you're encouraged to give some up as well, but it's not required," says Chandler. "We list each person's Karma Points next to their profile, so if anybody is a mooch it will be apparent."

Authors can also use Goodreads to promote their books through the Goodreads Authors Program, which allows authors to have a presence on Goodreads, collect fans, and gain readers. "You can also join a virtual or real life book club and find other members to read a book with and discuss it," adds Chandler. "If you want a real challenge, play our Never-Ending Book Trivia Quiz."

Textbooks.com
Anyone who's ever taken a college course has experienced the budget-busting heartbreak of waiting in line for hours at the university bookstore to buy your required textbooks, only to use them for four months (or fewer) then wait in line for hours again to return them for just pennies on the dollar. Empathetic professors try to assign older editions of textbooks, hoping to save students some much-needed dough, only to find that the bookstore won't carry them or the publisher won't send them. Enter Textbooks.com, where you can buy and sell used textbooks and new textbooks or e-textbooks, all from the privacy of your own home — and with a guarantee of 50% of the list price in cash.

Currently, Textbooks.com boasts over 9 million textbook listings, including hard-to-find and out-of-print textbooks as well as vocational texts and academic journals, all categorized similarly to course catalogs. While we couldn't get the back story from the Textbooks.com team in time for this article, we can tell you our moms will be so pleased now that we can finally get our undergrad and grad school textbooks out of her basement — and we finally know how we're going to afford holiday gifts this year.

So, what are these book-loving startup-junkies reading?

"Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, which is life-changing so far, and Coders at Work by Peter Seibel, which I recommend for any software engineer." ~ Otis Chandler, founder of GoodReads.com

"Six Pixels of Separation by Mitch Joel is a book my CTO Nick Ruffilo just handed to me. It's about leveraging the interconnectedness between people to pass a message that will resonate with friends, and friends of friends, and so on. He won the book, coincidentally through one of the hundreds of GoodReads giveaways, which represents an effective viral distribution channel employed by this book. I thrive on books like this, so it shouldn’t take long to read… especially since he placed sticky notes on the important pages for me. :-)" ~ George Burke, founder of Bookswim.com

"The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. It's pretty good so far. I'm just getting into it, but from the reviews that I've read, it's a fantastic book." ~ Richard Pickering, founder of PaperbackSwap.com

Copyright 2009 Shoestring, LLC. Photo: iStock