A few months ago, I joined a web site called PaperBackSwap (PBS), a great place for bibliophiles like myself to swap books we’re no longer interested in for ones we’d like to read.

The site has a very interesting approach to managing how books are swapped. When you sign up, you first have to post nine books that you are willing to part with. Once you’ve listed these books, the site gives you three credits.

Each time you request a book, one credit is deducted from your balance (you cannot have a negative balance, so once you get to zero credits, you have to post more books). When you receive the book, you go to the web site and indicate that you’ve received it and the sender receives one credit. If someone requests a book that you have, you send it out (at your own expense, which isn’t too bad since you can send the books via media mail) and earn a credit when the requestor marks the book as received.

The credit system is actually quiet ingenious, because it prevents several things from happening. First, it ensures that there are lots of books available in the system, because in order to receive books, you also have to post some (otherwise you’d run out of credits rather quickly). Also, if a book gets lost in the mail (which has happened to me), all you have to do is notify the site administrator and the requester receives his/her credit back (the sender is still out the shipping costs, but there’s not much that can be done about that).
The variety of books at PBS is quite impressive, although, as you might expect, it can vary greatly from one day to another. If you’re into reading classics, you can get your hands on just about anything; on the other hand, current bestsellers aren’t as easy to come by.

Interestingly, there’s a pretty high demand for textbooks. I had all of my college math and computer science textbooks lying around that I no longer wanted/needed, so I posted them on PBS. Within a day or two, I received requests for five of them. Not only was I able to get them off my hands, I was also able to use the credits I received in return to get some books I’d been wanting to read. Plus, I didn’t feel badly about getting rid of them because I wasn’t simply throwing them in a dumpster somewhere.

If you’re into books, I highly recommend taking a look at the site. You can search for currently available books before signing up, so you’ll be able to determine if PBS is something that meets your book-reading needs.