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Book swapping

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Book swapping or book exchange is the common practice of a swap of books between one person and another. Common practice amongst book groups, friends and colleagues at work, it provides a cheap way of people exchanging books, finding out about new books and obtaining a new book to read without having to pay. Many colleges and universities provide a book exchange program to help students save money. Free sites such as The Book eXchange Network also help students exchange books across multiple campuses. Other sites such as KYBookExchange.com help students exchange books at individual campuses.

Recent developments

With the growth of the Internet, book swapping Internet sites are becoming more common. The first such site was SF-Books.com, which introduced the 'credit' system to book swapping. This allowed the swapper to choose a book from the aggregate collection of all members, not just the individual he or she sent the book to. SF-Books.com specialises in science fiction and fantasy books, whereas other book-swap sites are more generalised.

The first book swap site in the UK was ReadItSwapIt where swaps are arranged person to person. BookHopper is another free service in the UK that is a pool of books where you can choose any book you like without having to arrange a swap. Bookoid.com is a US site which allows users to add a "Trading List" of books he or she wants, expanding on single swaps.

The largest online book swapping site in the USA is PaperBackSwap. While currently free, expected annual fees are in the $10-$20 range. With approximately 800,000 books available for request, this site has more than 30,000 books en route to members each week. This is more than twice the cumulative circulation of the other Internet swapping sites combined. In addition to free membership and participation for anyone served by the USPS (United States Postal Service), PaperBackSwap offers many additional free features and several 'for fee' services.

Bookcrossing invites people to leave their books in the wild so other people can pick them up. While not strictly a book swapping site, many people use the site for this purpose.

See also: Bookhopping
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