Unclutterer

1. Posted by Zack - 09/06/2007

   Other than having them mailed to you, and dealing with due dates, I fail to see how this is any better than a public library. Heck, I can reserve books online through my local library system, and then pick them up at a local branch - it takes less than 5 minutes to stop off and do that.

   Plus, often books = clutter, so that’s a downside as well.

2. Posted by the grapist - 09/06/2007

   There’s this place that’s like Netflix for books, DVDs, AND CDs. And it’s absolutely FREE. Amazing, I know. It’s called the public library.

3. Posted by TardyReader - 09/06/2007

   No late fees? At $20/month, I can pay for 16 books worth of late fees all month! (5 cents a day, library is open 24 days this month.)

4. Posted by Ali - 09/06/2007

   “How awesome is that?” Not awesome at all. Audible gives you a few books per month as well, but you own them. There are similar eBook companies that let you own the books you get with the monthly subscription. And if you want to get a physical book and/or sample before you buy, libraries (and even bookstores) are good alternatives. If you read more than a dozen books and do not live near a library, this may be the service for you, but then “the convenience for busy people” argument is a little off.

5. Posted by racketboy - 09/06/2007

   Plus, who really wants to have 3 books at a time (or more)? It doesn’t really seem practical to pay for all that when most people only read one at a time…

6. Posted by Ike - 09/06/2007

   I live in DC, where the selection in the library system is abysmal. This sounds like a great alternative, not because I’m busy or live far away from a library, but simply because I can get books that AREN’T available at my library. Which is a lot. And it would save me from buying used books that won’t fit in my already-full bookshelves.

7. Posted by Tom - 09/06/2007

   For technical books, check out O’Reilly’s Safari bookshelf. You pay $xx / mo for N slots on the bookshelf. You can select books from O’Reilly and other publishers to put on the shelf, up to N at a time.

   If you need to reference or search, digital is better. You can’t grep (search) dead trees (paper).

8. Posted by Jerry Brito - 09/06/2007

   Zack, Grapist, Ali and the rest: I specifically mentioned the library as a good alternative because I knew someone would suggest it. (Audible is a good alternative, too, but you don’t actually read the books and some may want the experience of reading.) So, besides the uninteresting fact that this service is not for you, what’s your point? Or can’t you conceive that some folks may have preferences and needs different than yours?

9. Posted by Nora Rocket - 09/06/2007

   Tom–you can’t grep a dead tree, but you can’t hug an ebook.

   To paraphrase an old saw, “prints not dead.”

10. Posted by mmr - 09/06/2007

    Three books at a time is just crazy. I read one book at at time, not three. Two better options:

    1) Buy two books from Amazon that total $25 dollars or more to get free shipping (plus Amazon is a discount from retail stores). Then read the books and resell them on Amazon. Poof, they are gone!

    2) Another option is to just buy the books used from Amazon to reap a bigger discount. Then go ahead and resell it. Chances are you will only end up paying between $2 and $5 dollars for the book when all was said and done.

    Plus, the second method will keep new books from being produced since you are recirculating ‘already-printed’ books, thus keeping the world free of more clutter!

11. Posted by Skellie - 09/06/2007

    I use http://www.bookmooch.com — it’s free, and allows you to send out books you don’t want and get books you do want in return. I’ve ‘mooched’ seven books so far and have nothing but positive things to say about it.

12. Posted by Cyrano - 09/06/2007

    Our county has a setup where they ship books between libraries at the user’s request. So I can search for a book, reserve it, and it will automatically get shipped to my local library. Since there’s also a book depository, I can drop it off whenever.

    Very convenient. Very free.

13. Posted by repsac3 - 09/06/2007

    While I think this is a good option for those who want it (& I’m glad to know it’s out there), I’m with the used book/digital book people. I’m a big fan of BookCrossing.com. Give away the books you’re no longer reading, either in trade for others, or just for the joy of it.

    (Of course, as a slowly recovering packrat, I don’t free nearly enough books–or anything else–myself, which is kinda why I’m here at unclutterer in the first place… 8>)

    Slowly trying to let it all go…

14. Posted by jl - 09/06/2007

    For the growing number of folks with community locked mailboxes, the drop slot for outgoing mail is often too small to put anything larger than a letter in. That means a trip to the post office, which, for me, is a couple of blocks from the library.

15. Posted by shris - 09/06/2007

    Paperbackswap.com lets you send your books for the price of postage, and books you receive are free.

    They’re not new books, they’re pre-read books. But who cares? It’s sooo much cheaper than any of the alternatives that actually allow you to ‘own’ the books while you have them. You can even buy credits if you don’t have books you want to get rid of.

16. Posted by Christine - 09/06/2007

    I was just going to mention Paperbackswap.com! It’s fantastic. I’ve never had any problems with the service, and they’re constantly making improvements to the website and the way things work. They just added the ability to purchase the postage from their site and print it right at home. I’d much rather pay $2 to ship a book once in a while than a monthly fee.

17. Posted by Anonymous - 09/06/2007

    3 books at at time - it’s just like 3 movies at a time. One doesn’t watch all 3 but sequentially.

    i, for one, borrow more than 1 book at a time from the library. i can read more than 1 book before i have to make a trip there again!

    libraries: often don’t have the latest paperbacks.

    bookmooch: nobody wants to mooch my books! so i don’t have enough points to mooch books. sigh. paying ensures you get books i guess.

    but it’s too expensive i think. for 19.90, u can get 3-4 latest paperbacks ? and that’s about the amount i can read in a mth, max.

18. Posted by Beth - 09/06/2007

    I use Booksfree.com, which is cheaper and has the same concept. I can justify the price as I read quite a bit, but I can see how others who don’t have as much time would find it expensive.

    I wish I could use the library, but for me (in Oakland), it’s in a pretty scary neighborhood and only seems to be open on alternate Thursdays.

19. Posted by Katie - 09/06/2007

    If we lived far away from the library, I think the added convenience would be worth it. However, I live pretty close to our library.

    One way I have found that saves a lot of time is to reserve books online. Since we have a pretty literate town (college town) I have to reserve most of the books I really want anyway, and then when it is ready I just have to pick it up and check it out - it takes like 5 minutes.

    I also use a Library Books program on my mac that tells me when my holds come in and when my books are due, which has helped me avoid a lot of the fines I used to get.

20. Posted by Daniel - 09/06/2007

    I think this would be great for my wife. Between work, two kids (one of which is in soccer and taking piano lessons), running daily arrends, and the extra drive from living in a rural, unincorporated part of our County, she hasn’t had time to step foot into a library for several months.

21. Posted by sarah - 09/06/2007

    i use paperbackswap. i list books i don’t want anymore and people request them from me. i request the books they have listed. read them, and relist them.

    i would use the library, but sometimes the selection sucks.

22. Posted by Joel - 09/06/2007

    20 bucks a month for that is crazy money.

23. Posted by racketboy - 09/06/2007

    Another vote for Bookmooch!

24. Posted by mindy - 09/06/2007

    Maybe a good idea for a select few.
    The rest of the country will find it much easier to reserve books online for pickup at their local library. Most libraries transfer books from one branch to another, free. If I need to keep a book longer, I can renew if online. I can return my books to the library 24 hrs a day at the drop slot. This is my situation; yours may be different.
    Does your library lack the books you want? ASK. Libraries do order brand new books to add to their shelves.
    For you packrats? Donate your books to your library! Help your community!
    As for this “book swim”, if you are too busy to swing by the library, how on earth do you have time to participate in book swim?!
    Finally, as a postal worker, with a walking route, I can tell you that the mere notion of “book swim” makes my back hurt even more.

25. Posted by Meagan - 09/06/2007

    I also use Paperbackswap.com. I would never use a subscription service for books because books take longer to finish. I would hate the fact that I was paying $20 a month to read maybe 2 books when I can get them used for much cheaper. Or free from the library, but I don’t even like that because I need the books longer than 2 weeks.

26. Posted by Lane - 09/06/2007

    I also live in DC and no thanks to those who suggested the library. Here’s yet another vote for Paperbackswap.com — I’ve gotten rid of about a dozen books I no longer needed to keep cluttering up my shelves, and at $2 apiece I’ve acquired books I really do want to read. But the difference is that now these books are mine, and they are already used, so I can retrade them, keep them, sell them, abandon them, or burn them, on my own timeframe. If it takes me six months to get around to reading one of them, I don’t have a monthly subscription fee to worry about. And if I read it sooner, I can put it back in the paperbackswap.com system and get a different one in its place relatively quickly.

27. Posted by Chris - 09/06/2007

    The site paperbackswap.com is another option too, where you mail out books and get books in return, paying only the postage you incur by sending your own books. The selection could be better, of course, but I’ve gotten some very nice stuff from there.

28. Posted by Jenny - 09/06/2007

    I did this site as an opp on sponsored reviews. I didn’t do as good a job as you. Your’s is way better.

29. Posted by T-mag - 09/06/2007

    This service would be great for people like me who go to the bookstore for one book and walk out with 150 bucks worth of books. Also if you have a big family and/or homeschool. Your kids can read all the best books and you can “store” them with the service. (Of course this will only work if the selection is there!) I think it’s worth looking at.

30. Posted by Amanda Himelein - 09/06/2007

    I think it’s a great idea. I DO read 3 books at a time: I try always to be in the middle of a novel, a non-fiction (history, biography, science, etc), and a personal development book. The library is great in the novel and non-fiction departments, but behind the times in personal development (or, rather, I devote as much time to personal development as I do to the entire rest of the library, and the library can’t keep up.)

    $20/mo does strike me as expensive. It worked for Netflix because people’s alternative was Blockbuster, and movies take 2-3 hours to watch. 8 hours/day = 3 movies/day = $6/day at Blockbuster. Netflix was clearly cheaper.

    8 hours/day = 1 book every 3-4 days = $2/day at Barnes & Noble. Not quite as good a deal, especially when MANY of the books you want, if not all, are available for free at the library, online, or borrowed from a friend.

    If it works out for them, I wish them the best, and will subscribe when I can afford it. If there turns out to be insufficient demand…. I still think the first few posters were unnecessarily sarcastic.

31. Posted by rrr - 09/06/2007

    I used booksfree.com for a while. The only problem I had was the books I wanted to read the most were older books that they had few copies of and so they kept sending me things from lower on my “want list.” And, of course, I still haven’t given up hording my books and I hated to send them back.

32. Posted by Andamom - 09/06/2007

    Eh… I agree with the earlier posters that the library is always the way to go. In many locations including here in Brooklyn, if your specific branch doesn’t carry a specific book, you can order it to be delivered from another branch. It is free — and there are branches in most neighborhoods — so you are never that far away.

    We do order DVDs from Netflix though because we are looking for specific movies — and many that the library carries are scratched.

33. Posted by Leo - 09/06/2007

    I tried booksfree.com awhile back, as the concept was the same (but cheaper). However, it took them like 6 weeks to ship books to me, which is ridiculous. So I canceled.

    I now use Bookmooch.com, which I like a lot better.

34. Posted by Christie - 09/07/2007

    Do any of the mentioned services give you book recommendations based on what you’ve read and enjoyed in the past? This is one aspect of Netflix that I really enjoy. I’ve started using goodreads.com to catalogue the books I’ve read and keep a list of the books I plan to read. It allows your “friends” to make book recommendations, but your counting on your “friends” to have the same taste as you do in book selection!

35. Posted by Misa - 09/07/2007

    I’d consider paying for a service like this but twenty dollars a month does sound a bit steep. Perhaps if I lived in an area where our library system wasn’t very good, I’d be more willing to do so. As it is, I often get books shipped to me from across the country if my library doesn’t have the one I’m looking for, via inter-library loans. I also live about a block from a Half-Price books, so between that and the library, it’s very rare that I spend twenty a month in books. (I used to, though, when I made more purchases from Borders.) However, when I DO spend that much a month in books, I want it is on books that I want to keep.

    Perhaps if the price was lower…

36. Posted by Jerry Brito - 09/07/2007

    Jenny, Let me be clear: This is not a sponsored review. I’ve had no contact with Book Swim. Here at Unclutterer we would disclose any tie to a reviewed service/product.

    Thanks to everyone else for their suggestions. The BookMooch.com, BookCrossing.com, PaperBackSwap.com, and BooksFree.com suggestions are all awesome! I never knew there were so many of these services.

37. Posted by Angela - 09/07/2007

    I’m amazed at how derogatory some of these comments are but I guess thats part of comments and talking about money and stuff. Anyway, just like Book crossing, paper back swap, books free, and book mooch all work for some people, even if it is a “select few” it still works for someone. I read about 10 books a month if not more. And there are times when I can’t get to the library and I don’t want to build a “library” because its more stuff and I won’t reread most books. And yes, $20 is pricy but really so are movies from NF or BB. Its all about what is important to you. I personally would rather read in my time than watch movies. Each person is different and for me if unclutterer hadn’t talked about it I would never have known about this. Oh, and it makes sense that more of that $20 is going towards postage than anything else. Books are much bigger than dvds and so that price seems good, it will allow them to buy more books than just having the whole amount go towards shipping.

38. Posted by Pat - 09/07/2007

    Here’s another way to get rid of books: Donate them

    http://www.booksforafrica.org/

    I’m sure there are lots of other organizations too.

39. Posted by E.D. - 09/07/2007

    Another vote for paperbackswap.com!

40. Posted by Adam Snider - 09/07/2007

    Unless you live in an area with a poor library system, this is actually a pretty terrible solution, at least in my opinion.

    My local library costs about $12 a YEAR for a card, a fee which they will waive if you tell them that you can’t afford it. And, late fees are something like $0.10 a day, so it’s really not a big deal if I’m a few days late.

41. Posted by Jeri Dansky - 09/08/2007

    Jerry, there are even more services than already noted. My blog post, 10 ways to find new homes for your books, lists nine swapping options: BookMooch and PaperBackswap and seven more.

    http://jdorganizer.blogspot.co.....-your.html

42. Posted by BigNerd - 09/09/2007

    One in four people actually finished reading a single book last year.

    It appears they have all been here and commented on this post.

    My wife and I like going to our local library. However, I think books tend to find her rather than her looking for specific books.

43. Posted by Carol Stewart - 09/09/2007

    If I lived - as many people do - in an area where I did not have good library services, this would be perfect for me, if a little pricey. For those who seem to be overwhelmed by the idea of reading more than one book at a time - I rarely have less than three going. People read books differently. And for the person who said that listening to audiobooks “wasn’t really reading” - audiobooks allow me to read even more books than I would otherwise. I usually have at least one, sometimes two of those going at any given time as well (one in my house, one in the truck and maybe even a different one on the ipod).
    I would never get any use out of netflix because I rarely watch movies - so having this kind of service for someone who reads the way that other people watch movies is fantastic. I already subscribe to audible.com because even though I can get audiobooks for free at my local library, they don’t always have the ones I want. Just like I buy some books - or, in this case, would be willing to rent some books - because my library might not always have what I want when I want it. This sounds like a great service - I hope they do well. And I’m glad to find out about the other swap/exchange book sites as well.

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