Best designed and most potential to be really useful. Currently there are 21,000 textbooks posted on this exchange. Site is run by a branch of the Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) that was recently launched. In addition to this free book exchange, they also run maketextbooksaffordable.com. It’s a great campaign, and their site also has some useful resources.
BookMooch is a free community for exchanging books. By donating books to BookMooch, you accrue points that can be exchanged for other people’s books. It’s free to join and the only price you will pay is shipping when you mail your books. Also, the points you earn and the books you donate can be given away to charity, such as African literacy programs or children’s hospitals.This site is one of the largest book-swapping communities online and the interface is very simple. If you would like a specific book that isn’t listed yet on BookMooch, a “wish list” can be made, which will put you first in line to receive your wanted books once they are available. Looks like the user base continues to grow. It’s also well designed.
This site is now on Facebook. Site allows you to advertise your books to students on your own campus — no going through the bookstore. So, the savings are significant because you’re able to cut out the middle man. In addition, you don’t have to spend time and money to send your book to someone, as you would if you used Amazon.com’s marketplace. You can meet up with your buyer or seller in the library or on the quad, or wherever, to make the transaction. Site gets bonus points for being well designed and easy to use. Obviously, though, this site will only be successful if many students on your campus are using it, otherwise, you’ll never find the books you need.
Site allows you to rent books for a reduced price for varying durations. It’s a novel approach. I like it. At the end of your rental period, if you don’t want to return your books you’re allowed to purchase them, and your previously-paid rental fee is put towards the cost. The downside of the rental thing, in my view, is that you have to keep the book in “like new” condition according to the site, so you always have to worry about fraying pages. You’d probably have to put on one of those paper-bag slip covers like in high school. Also, the site does buybacks and commits to paying you the most for your used books out of anyone on the Web. It requests that if you find another site willing to pay you more for your books, that you send them an email. They will pay you 10 percent more. It’s still a pretty new site, and concept.
Can trade / swap books, movies and music and it’s free. Nice, clean design. You send in books after your done and accrue request points once someone chooses your material. You can also buy request points if something comes on the site and you don’t want to have to swap away something to get it or you can gain points by referrings someone else to the site. Seems like a really cool system. Please rate and leave a review with your experiences using this site.
This is a very commercial text exchange with a lot of distracting ads that clutter the site, but after a few searches I found that a surprisingly large number of students have posted textbooks. Rate this site and let us know about your experiences with it.
A hybrid site that allows you to search bookstores and, more importantly, trade books with students locally on your own campus as a part of the site’s “Student Marketplace.” One of the better designed smaller text exchange sites which gets major points for being free to use but it spreads itself too think letting people swap everything and doesn’t have the user base to make it really useful for textbooks, unfortunately. According to Quancast, get’s about 4,500 visitors a month. Would love it if they just focused their energy on developing the “Student Marketplace” solely since there are already so many good.
Nice, new book, well designed site that facilitates book exchanging, renting, selling and gives appartment info.
Unlike Amazon.com, users don’t have to pay for the actual book, just shipping. Unlike with a library book, there’s no due date (or late fee).
List books you have read for other members to request, and request books from other members that you want to read. Your requested books are mailed to you by the owner who pays the cost of shipping using USPS Media Mail postage rates. You reciprocate when books are requested from you.
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