I almost always buy used books, since the words don’t change after reading nor are they copyright protected. I have local sources for used books, but sometimes I want a particular book that is not available locally. Everyone knows you can buy used books from Amazon.com, but there are a multitude of used book websites to provide just about any book you are looking for. Today I investigated AbeBooks.com. In addition to fiction and best sellers, they also buy and sell textbooks. I did a test search for one of my favorite authors, Ken Follett, and found over 21,000 results. I’m off now to spend some holiday cash I received at AbeBooks!
Paperbackswap.com is a site where you can swap out your used paper backs. When you are done with a book, list it on your account. When someone else wants it, you pay to ship it to them and receive credits to your account to use to get other members books. It is a good concept if you tend to read best sellers, but for not so popular books they will sit on your available shelf for quite a while. I signed up and got my signing bonus for listing 10 books, which I used to get a few older books I had been looking for. I also sent a few books, but lost interest when I decided I would have to store these books until someone else wanted them. It is better for me to just give them away rather than store them. There are over 1400 members swapping books so quite a few are available - usually multiple copies of popular books. Visit the Paperbackswap.com website to learn more about it.