by Kath Campbell

Created on: January 21, 2009   Last Updated: September 16, 2010

About a year ago, a friend told me about a site where you can swap books. The concept sounded exciting to me because as a mother of small children, it is nearly impossible for me to find time to visit the local library and browse for something interesting to read. If I ever do get something from the library, chances are that I won't be able to finish it before the due date, even if nobody else reserves it and I can get a renewal period. Also, I had a bunch of books I'd read on my shelves and found the possibility of trading them for new books exciting.

I joined two different swap sites at the same time, PaperBackSwap.com and BookMooch.com. I have remained a member of both of these sites because they both take a different approach to swapping books and they both have advantages.

PaperBackSwap.com

When you first join PaperBackSwap.com, you are asked to list a minimum of 10 books. You don't have to list this many to get started, but if you do, you immediately get two credits to have someone mail a book to you. Otherwise, you will have to wait until someone else requests your book and notifies the system that they have received it in the mail.

One of the advantages of PaperBackSwap.com is that you can also buy book credits. At the time of this article, the credits cost $3.85 each with a service charge of $0.50 for each order. For this reason, I like to buy at least 3 credits at a time so I can divide the surcharge among the credits, effectively reducing the cost per book. PBS accepts PayPal and credit cards, so purchasing is easy. This is a great option for getting inexpensive used books regardless of whether you also mail books out to receive credits.

The main attribute of PBS that is different from BookMooch is the use of FIFO (first-in-first-out) queues (a.k.a. first-come-first-served). When you list a book, it is added to the end of the list of all the other books of that ISBN that other members have marked as ready for trade. Once the books before yours have been traded, yours will be the next one available when someone else requests that book. The same works for wish lists. If there are no copies available of a book, your name is added to the end of the line of persons requesting that book. Once all the other people get that book, it is your turn. This is great because it ensures fairness.

There is one exception to the queues rule, but it is an advantage. When you request a book from someone, you are given the option to select other books from that person,

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