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Is There A Book Sharing Network?
dmorin asks: "Having recently been laid off I find myself with more time to read and less money to spend on books. I stare at the shelves full of books I already have, most of which I won't read again, and wonder if there's an easy way to move them around the universe a bit. Get some new ones. I've thought about eBay, but I'm not sure that time and effort (cataloging, pricing, describing, shipping, etc..) would ever balance out. What I'm looking for is a site where people basically say 'Hey, here are some books I have, if you want one, I'll send it to you.' Note I didn't say 'sell'. This would be more about keeping the books in circulation for the sake of getting fresh stuff to read, not for making a profit. You paid for the book, you got something out of it, now let somebody else share it. And, of course, you're supposed to be asking other people for their books, too. Anything like that out there? Would anybody use such a thing?"
"This is not Book Crossing. Although I find that an awesome idea, I'm looking for more of a steady stream of books at my disposal, not just being lucky enough to stumble upon one under a picnic table.
I suppose such a service would have to have some sort of karma/moderation system to make sure that people were playing nice and not just hoarding others' books (since, unlike bookcrossing, the person donating would have to cough up some money for shipping it)."
Another place to look, if you've got an RV campground nearby, some of those have really good trading libraries. Lots of Danielle Steele and similar muck, but good books too. Full-time RV'ers are...interesting...people. You might be surprised at what you find in those swap shelves.
Likewise, lots of used bookstores will give pretty decent credit for trade-ins (you usually get less cash than credit for trade when you sell). You'll diminish your collection slowly that way, but used bookstores are wonderous places to spend a lot of time if you've got a good one. If you spent money on more books rather than shipping costs you'd be able to keep that trading up indefinitely.
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"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." -Emerson
Cheap: .e-books. Newsgroups (again, if you're not averse to that sort of thing) ... Also... there are 3 coffee houses/cafes within about a 1/2 hour drive of me that have book swap shelves... a sort of informal leave 1, take 1 (or 2 or 3) sort of deal
1. Library book sales (they sell old/slightly damaged/redundant copies, two of them by me have permanent rooms full of books set up and sell them as a fund raiser)
2. Thrift shops
3. Flea markets/swap meets
4. Garage/yard/estate sales
5. Slightly illegal: Your local big box super stores dumpsters have TONS of "stripped" (no cover) books and magazines in them
Free:
1. Project Gutenberg
2. Many University web/ftp sites
3. Some warez web/ftp sites (if you're not averse to that sort of thing)
4.
5. Baen books
6. Memoware
7. Several more e-book sources that I cannot think of right now
[what?]
Newsgroups are always the source for things of this nature
Other people are the most valuable resources for OCR books (and PDF scans.) if you do not have a scanner of your own that is.
Alt.binaries (will now be represented with a.b. for non Usenet fanatics) a.b.ebooks, a.b.e-book, a.b.e-book.flood, a.b.e-books, a.b.e-books.flood, a.b.e-books.technical.
If there is an author you would like posted, you post a request for them.
If you don't want to be a usenet freak with a client and all, you can just sign up for www.easynews.com. good enough for me.
Well, if it's anything like my local library they don't want them. They have no room and no staff to deal with used books.
Unfortunately, they're not accepting new memberships at the moment, but they promise to continue soon.
vi ~/.emacs
Often times, truck stops and campgrounds will have book swapping racks. It's not quite as high tech as you have in mind, but the next time you're out driving around, drop off a few and pick up a few.
While it isn't on the global scale you seem to seek, I know of two coffee shops with "Take a Book, Leave a Book" libraries. They work out quite nicely. I see quite a few of the books I leave come and go more than once, so people definitely come back for more. Perhaps you could persuade a local technology store into allocating floor space to something like this for technology books.
You might check out Swappingtons. It works with swap points, and it's for books and other media. It's brand new, so you might have to dig for something you want.
I think you're basically describing Trodo, a one-for-one media swapping service.
There's problems with it's business model (Ex: ANY 'Book' is one 'credit' - So a moth-eaten copy of 'The Two Towers' is worth as much as an obscure out-of-print short story collection.), but my limited experience so far (one taken, one given.) has been good.
If you want to sign up, a link is here.(No cost to you, small benefit to me.)