Swap those Travel Guidebooks -- for free!

Never Buy Another Travel Guidebook Again...

You've just booked your dream trip to Italy.  You peruse your bookshelves, which are overflowing with Fodors, Frommers, and Cadogan guides to Spain, England, Ireland, France and Germany.  Uh oh, there's nothing on Italy!  Time to visit the bookstore? 

Wait!  Instead of spending another $30 on guidebooks, why not save that money for a shopping spree in Sorrento?  Trade your used books for all of your new destinations at Swaptree for free!

Swaptree is a website that allows you to trade your books for the cost of postage.  Using computer generated multi-way trade algorithms to arrange book, CD, DVD and video game swaps, the procedure is easy. 

All you do is enter the UPC code or the ISBN code on the back of your used books, CDs, DVDs or video games in the "Items I Have" section.  Then you list the books you want in the "Items I Want" section.  With any luck, Swaptree will present items you can trade for and you'll make a trade or two.  The site is fairly new, but their inventory is growing -- if you aren't immediately presented with any trades for the books you listed, don't worry.  Swaptree is a dynamic community, with new items being added continually.

To see how it works, I listed about 15 books I was willing to trade.  Personally, I have trouble parting with my guidebooks (as you can see from the photo above I've collected about ten on Morocco alone!), but I listed a few other travel related books as well as fiction books in the hopes of making some trades.  Among the items I listed was The Ruins, which I was able to trade for a nice hardback copy of The Nanny Diaries. 

Right now, one of the most popular travel books on the site is 1,000 Places to See Before You Die by Patricia Schultz.  If you have this item, you have a choice of 4,356 items you can trade it for.  Some of the other travel books that are popular on Swaptree now are Into the Wild, by Jon Krakauer, Frances Mayes' Under the Tuscan Sun, and Erma Bombeck's When You Look Like Your Passport Photo, it's Time to Go Home.

What makes trading on Swaptree so easy is that you don't have to worry about going to the Post Office.  You can either use your own postage or print out a prepaid, pre-addressed mailing label.  With the latter, all you have to do is put the book in an envelope and drop it in the closest mailbox.

The only downside to using Swaptree is that it can be addictive.  When I found myself snagging multiple copies of books I'd already read from the book exchange shelf at work (in the hopes of making more trades), I knew it was time to take a break.

Comments

[Tina]

Great review of a great site. You are right about the addictive warning, IT IS.

thanks
tina