Photo by desi.italy

Throughout the past few months, a number of interesting book-sharing sites have caught my attention, and I thought I would spend a few minutes this Tuesday sharing them!

• Novel Action:  This site allows you to select any books you want from the site and then send in an equal number of your books in exchange (your selections will be sent out the same day they receive your books).  With $4.80 flat rate shipping for up to 6 lbs. of books, no transaction fees, and custom alerts for your favorite authors, books or genres, members are supposed to save both time and money.

• BookCrossing — At BookCrossing, you can register any book you have on the site, and then set the book free to travel the world and find new readers. Leave it on a park bench, at a coffee shop, at a hotel on vacation. Share it with a friend or tuck it onto a bookshelf at the gym — anywhere it might find a new reader! What happens next is up to fate, and we never know where our books might travel next. Track the book’s journey around the world as it is passed on from person to person.

• DailyLit — DailyLit sends books in installments via e-mail or RSS feed. They currently offer over 750 classic and contemporary books available entirely for free or on a Pay-Per-Read basis (with sample installments available for free). You can read your installments wherever you receive e-mail/RSS feeds, including on your Blackberry and iPhone. Installments arrive in your Inbox according to the schedule you set (e.g. 7:00am every weekday). You can read each installment in under 5 minutes (most folks finish in 2-3 minutes), and, if you have more time to read, you can receive additional installments immediately on demand. Titles include bestselling and award winning titles, from literary fiction and romance to language learning and science fiction.

• BookSwim — BookSwim is the first online book rental library club lending you paperbacks and hardcovers netflix-style directly to your house without the need to purchase! Whether it’s New Releases, Bestsellers, or Classics, we’ve got over 200,000 titles to choose from, with free shipping both ways! Read your books as long as you want. — no late fees! Even choose to purchase and keep the titles you love!

• BookMooch — BookMooch is a community for exchanging used books.  BookMooch lets you give away books you no longer need in exchange for books you really want.  Every time you give someone a book, you earn a point and can get any book you want from anyone else at BookMooch. Once you’ve read a book, you can keep it forever or put it back into BookMooch for someone else, as you wish. There is no cost to join or use this web site: your only cost is mailing your books to others. You receive a tenth-of-a-point for every book you type into our system, and one point each time you give a book away. In order to keep receiving books, you need to give away at least one book for every three you receive.  You can also give your points to charities we work with, such as children’s hospitals (so a sick kid can get a free book delivered to their bed), Library fund, African literacy, or to them to thank them for running their web site.

• Paperbackswap – A group of readers who share books with each other (NOT just paperbacks) for nothing more than the cost of postage! You can learn more about this exciting site by flipping through our PaperBackSwap book.  Thank you, Tara, for the heads up on this site!

• Bookins — Provides postage, tracks all shipments, and will even pick up the cost of sending replacements for lost or damaged items. Books and DVDs can be exchanged for each other, just let them know what you have and what you want, they’ll take care of the rest.  Thanks to Prisca for this site!

• Readitswapit — At ReadItSwapIt, you can swap your old old old books for new ones.  It is a free book exchange website that allows you to swap the books you don’t want for the second-hand books that you do.  Thank you to Mrs. S from across the pond for this site !

So, what do you think?  Any of these sites tempting?  Personally, I’m so happy with my library — especially since I can order titles online and check them out automatically — that none of these sites grab me.  However, I do live within a stone’s throw of two fairly major cities.  If I lived in a rural area, I might be VERY interested in Novel Action, Book Swim or Book Mooch! 

By the way, congratulations to Christine from She Reads Books for winning a free copy of You, The Owner’s Manual…  Enjoy! 

Welcome back!