by Eileen Weber
If you’re like me, you have enough books on your bookshelf to choke a horse. Occasionally, I’ll sift through them and take some of them to the library. But for the most part, I stock my bookcases with the books I buy. They just sit there, staring at me like lonely children waiting to play a game.
But there is hope for the pack rat that lurks in all of us. With web sites like Biblio.com, BetterWorldBooks.com, and PaperBackSwap.com, your used books won’t go to waste. They recycle old textbooks, paperbacks, and in some cases, CDs and DVDs. You got it? They want it.
Biblio.com, a company based in Asheville, North Carolina, purchases used, rare, and out-of-print books to sell online. They have been in business since 2003 and recently launched their U.K. version earlier this year. With a range of topics, you can get art and architecture to poetry to science to religion to health and fitness, and everything in between.
It’s a great site to go to if you belong to a bookgroup or, even better, if you’re a student living on a shoestring budget. Just a cursory look for a classic like Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter gave a long list of copies available for only $1. For a starving college kid living off Mac and Cheese and Ramen noodles, that leaves enough cash in your pocket for beer.
Even better, Biblio announced in 2007 that it would reduce the carbon emissions in their shipping process to become carbon neutral. “While we view carbon offsets as a part of an overall strategy to ensure that our business does not harm the environment and the climate,” says Biblio.com CEO Brendan Sherar in a company press release dated October 8, 2007, “we also recognize that reducing our carbon footprint is far more important than offsetting.”
The company uses an online system called “ecosend”. Biblio.com launched the system in partnership with NativeEnergy, a Native American company that provides funding for renewable energy like wind turbines and farm methane energy projects throughout the U.S. on family farms and in Native American communities.
BetterWorldBooks.com is also carbon neutral with their shipping. They charge no shipping fees and they offset the shipping through Carbonfund.org. And if that weren’t enough, they fund literacy education with the millions of donated books they receive every year.
“We want to ensure that children and their families have access to books, so they can continue improving their literacy skills, which is the building block to all other learning,” said President and CEO David Murphy in a company press release dated January 9, 2009.
The company, started in 2002 by three friends from the University of Notre Dame, initially sold only used textbooks. Since then, the company has blossomed into a thriving online bookseller. They not only have new titles but they also support book drives and collect used textbooks. They have a partnership with close to 1,000 libraries and 1,600 college and university campuses to collect and reuse books. As an added bonus, this keeps thousands of books from ending up in landfills.
If you’re looking to keep those easy beach reads or cheap thrillers from going unused, you might consider trying PaperBackSwap.com. The Georgia-based company is essentially a used book club. But since it began in 2004, it has branched out into swapping CDs and DVDs as well. As a member, all you need is online access, an e-mail account, and a valid postal address. For the books you swap, you earn “book credits”. You only need one credit to purchase a book from another member.
"We see our members trade about 35,000 books a week,” says Co-Founder and avid reader Richard Pickering in a press release dated March 8, 2007. “With this explosion of interest in trading books, our members can select from any genre to satisfy their literary desires."
So this summer as you lounge at the pool, on the beach, or near the lake, pick up a used book. It may not be new, but it’s new to you.
Photo courtesy of Western Washington University Library.
Here is another great way to save on Textbooks. http://www.edubookswap.com/ With our patented points trading system the full retail value of your textbook is converted to points, you then use your points to acquire the textbooks you need. If your book is worth $100 you can swap it for a book that is worth $100, any unused points are available for more swaps…it’s really that easy.
For more info visit http://www.edubookswap.com
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