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Warning: I have discovered another website to join.

If you are my sister and think I join too many websites, you can stop reading here, otherwise keep going because it’s really great!

So, what do you do with books you’ve read? Do you share them with friends? Or let them gather dust on bookshelves?

I used to do book swaps with my mom, sister, and friends, and still do, but I try my hardest not to buy too many books, since they tend to just sit around for years, gathering dust on my shelves.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve never read a book more than once, and probably never will. It’s just not my style. There are too many other books I want to get through, and I’m kind of a slow reader!

Luckily, not my house. Source.

I hate clutter and try to reorganize my things as often as I can so that I don’t collect too much *stuff*. Unfortunately books are a big portion of that random stuff we like to collect.

I used to keep all my college books… why??? In case I decide to read them someday? um, yeah we all know how often that is, considering I didn’t even read them the first time. We are 105% (approximate stat) more likely to go online before opening any textbooks. So in grad school I made sure to sell all of my books immediately (sometimes during) when the semester was over on half.com. It was genius and in most cases I got 75% of the cost back.

Now that I’ve gotten over the pain of grad school reading, I am back to looooving reading for fun! I stock up on audiobooks from the library and fill up my iPod so that I can be prepared for any road trip.

But lately I’ve gotten back into enjoying reading the book in print too. I don’t own a Kindle, but I’d be open to trying to read books on A.K.’s new iPad. But before I get too techy too fast, I’ve been sticking to real, old school books since I hear they are said to disappear at some point in my lifetime. Weird, right?

(source)

I still think books are wonderful gifts; but since books are going out of style, I decided I don’t want to buy books for myself and stock up on any more than I already have (oh and no more DVDs either).

Enter: Swap.com

Swap.com lets you get books you haven’t read by swapping them with books you’ve already read and want to get rid of!

When you sign up for swap.com you make a list of all the books you “HAVE” and then make a list of all the books you “WANT.”

So, I went through all of the books I had in my old childhood bedroom at my parents’ house (summer reading books, book report books, vacation reading, birthday gifts) and listed all of them in my “Have” list. At the top of the screen there you can see that based on my “Have” list, there are 8,106 books I could get. Looking through that list sometimes helps remind me of books I want to read and request swaps that way.

OR I can also list all the books I “Want” to read: A bunch of Jodi Picoult books, some non fiction books, Bossypants by Tina Fey. And based on those exact swaps when I log in, it will tell me at the top that I have been matched and there is a possible swap available. In this screenshot you can see that today was one of those cases!

So you can make your list, forget about it, and then months later get an email saying someone is requesting a swap. And you can decide if you want to make the swap or not. It’s fun, I’ve done it twice so far and it has worked out great!

When I’m done with those, I might list them back on the site and get something else. Talk about being Green, this is totally the greatest form of recycling. Much safer and easier than something like this:

Chair made out of books or literally, a book light. Source.

There are swapping fees and you need to pay for shipping, but so far it seems like every other month, or so, is offering no swapping fees, AND if your friends are referred by you, you can get free mailing labels too.

So if you are interested in a referral, please let me know :)

I have also seen emails saying that they are going into a beta version of swapping other things besides media, like jewelry, electronics, and clothes. So the success with books is causing the site to expand.

These are all my own opinions, I have not been asked to review by swap.com. I have simply just finished doing a swap and was really excited about it.

Have you ever used swap.com? What do you do with books you have read?