whatsonmybookshelf.com

I'm not sure why I bothered signing up at whatsonmybookshelf.com when it turns out there are many other sites out there doing the same thing. Some of the other sites have a much larger selection of books as well as different points systems.

The first site was sf-books which trades in sci-fi and fantasy books. I might check that out when I want a new sci-fi book. I don't have a ton of sci-fi I'm ready to give away yet though.

bookins.com has an interesting system. It is a flat rate $3.99 for every book you receive. Sending books is free, using labels that can be printed on your own printer. Alas, when you try signing up, I get this "Bookins does not ship internationally. We ship within the United States and to U.S. Territories." If there was a website like this in Canada that would be great. At the bottom of their pages it says "US Patent Pending." If they didn't patent it in Canada it might be possible to copy their idea exactly.

bookcrossing.com goes a bit like this: "the practice of leaving a book in a public place to be picked up and read by others, who then do likewise."

titletrader.com - Swapping of books, CDs, DVDs and available for Canadians.

There are a bunch more book swapping sites at Wikipedia.

I'm thinking of giving up on whatsonmybookshelf.com and going with bookmooch.com for any future books I want to get rid of. It has far more books than whatsonmybookshelf.com (see here compared to whatsonmybookshelf.com which only has 400 or so books). I like bookmooch.com's points system better:

I like how you get more points for sending a book internationally, something that isn't accounted for on whatsonmybookshelf.com.

I just shipped my first book using What's On My Bookshelf. Unfortunately I had to ship it internationally, to Denmark. On the bright side, Canada Post has a service called "small packets" and shipping small packets by surface mail internationally is really cheap. The book weighted 700g and it cost about $12 including taxes to ship it to Denmark. It will take at least a month to get there though!

That book was worth two points on What's On My Bookshelf, so that means I can get two one-point books in exchange. My first two books will thus cost me about $6 each. That could work out alright.

I still think it is probably more affordable to just give your old books away locally (either to a Salvation Army or a used book store) and then buy books at a used book store. The disadvantage to this is that a used book store may not have a book you want. But this is going to be much cheaper than What's On My Bookshelf, in my opinion. There are several used book stores nearby. We have gone to Tanglewood bookstore before and it was a bit annoying because lots of their book were new or almost new, but the salesman was really helpful.