My favorite source for used books is Swap.com. It’s a trading site. You make a list of items you have, and a list of items you want. You then trade with other users. I mainly use it for books, but you can also trade DVDs, video games, and CDs.
I like it for several reasons. First, they make shipping extremely easy. After a trade is accepted by all parties, you can print a shipping label directly from the site. Delivery confirmation is included, and the total comes out being less than if you paid for postage and delivery confirmation at the post office. Once you have the label, you pack up your book and pop it into your own mailbox to be picked up. Because you’ve paid for and printed the label online, there is no weight limit like you have for items mailed with stamps. It usually costs between $2.50 and $3.50 depending on the weight of the book, which is automatically figured in the site’s database. You don’t have to know that or enter it yourself.
When using Swap.com’s postage, there is a $1 per month fee. Once a month your credit card is charged for that fee plus whatever shipping labels you’ve printed. If you don’t print any labels that month, you aren’t charged anything.
So far I have been very happy with the quality of the books. When I’m offered something in a trade, it includes a description of the item and I can decide if it is acceptable to me. I can also look at the other user’s trade rating to decide if they are trustworthy. If I see that the person has a history of late shipping (things are supposed to be mailed the next business day) or sending items that are in worse condition than described, I just reject that trade. I’ve traded over a hundred times, and only once had a problem. A PC game I got for my kids was damaged and didn’t work, and the other user deleted their account before I could get the site involved.
There is a bit of risk involved because if someone just decides not to send your book, there’s not a lot the site can do other than freeze their account. If someone sends you something and it gets lost in the mail, they might not choose to replace the item, especially if they’ve used a Swap.com label and it’s clear they followed through on their end of the deal. In my experience though, most people are happy to go out of their way to fix any problems and are honest about the condition of the items. There are strict rules about describing the condition of items, and the vast majority of people follow those guidelines.
Being able to clear out my piles and piles of books I won’t read again (as well as stupid DVDs my husband bought) makes it worth it for me! I like that I can pause my account if I don’t want to get any trades, that I can easily reuse most of the packaging from the books I receive, and that I don’t have to run to the post office to ship anything.
If you check the site out, I’d strongly suggest reading the FAQs before doing anything else. There are also message boards if you have questions that aren’t covered in the FAQs.
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