Swaptree: New Online Trading System for Books
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 07.31.07
We have a lot of books, and getting rid of them is tough. We have tried eBay, garage sales and Freecycle, but books are different, They are the ultimate "long tail" product; somebody is interested in it but how do you find them?
Jeff Bezos knew this. There are more books than any store could stock, or that one neighbourhood could absorb. Books are small and dense, catalogued by a universal numbering system and relatively easy to ship; he built Amazon around them and the rest is history.
That is what is so interesting about Swaptree, a new trading system for books, CD's and DVD's, all products that have a code number (in books it is an ISBN) so that their computer's algorithms can catalogue, track and assign a value to them.
You list what you want and what you have, and the computer figures out where it is and sets up trades. All you pay is the shipping, but there are special book rates from couriers that are quite cheap. Swaptree even prints out the shipping label and costs for you.
It is like a nationwide mashup of the technology of an Amazon with the ideal of Freecycle- there is someone for every book, you just need the ability to find them or have them find you. By limiting goods to those with a code and a database, it is easier to manage than systems that handle everything and need a lot of human intervention.
Unfortunately, it only works in the USA, which counts me out; I hope that they rectify this soon. ::Swaptree
I have been using SwapTree since it was still in Beta and it is fabulous. The algorithm figures out trades so that you get a book you want in return for sending somebody else one of your books (trades could be 2-person, 3, 4, etc!). It is a really great idea and works very well too. I recommend you to try it out!
This is the definition of a great idea. I am going to be checking this out immediately.
I couldn't agree more.
I've also been using Swaptree since early Beta release, and it works brilliantly. I've traded over 70 items (mostly books, DVDs, and CDs) and had a great experience. It's like having a Netflix queue except it's FREE and also includes books, DVDs and CDs...every few days I'm getting something new that I want and then 'recycling' some older things that I no longer want.
Swaptree is brilliant. Works great, and I'm a big fan also.
I use paperbackswap / swapaCD and think their system is better (though they only do Books and CDs, no games or DVDs yet). They system is easier because you get a "credit" every time you give away a CD or book, then can trade that credit in, at any time, for any book or CD. SwapTree's system of working out a 4 way trade seems restrictive and unnecessary.
There are other trading systems for media. I've been using Book Mooch and Paperback Swap to exchange books and LaLa and Swap A CD for CDs.
I've had good luck with all of these. The CDs have all been back and forth within the US, but I've sent books to Canada, as well as Australia, Poland, and the UK.
Cool!, I was coincidently looking for the book "Crunchy Peanut Butter", I heard it is a quite popular book even though it's a bit of a brick.
This is not really that new and there are a number of online 'book swap' sites. I have used paperbackswap.com for the last two years and have saved almost $500 in book costs. Excellent way to recycle books.
The Game Trading Zone (http://www.gametz.com) is another great trading site. While it is more focused on video games, you can also trade books, music and movies as well.
I don't swap books. I'd rather just go to the library, check out what I want, and bring it home. Chances are, if my local library doesn't have what I want, I can get an inter-library loan.
It's cheaper-in fact, it's free. And I'm still reusing the same copies...
And how green is it to be sending individual books and CDs through the mail to faraway locations? I can understand using it for things that you just can't find in the local library or from your local Freecycle or Craigslist. But I'm not crazy about the idea of using all that fuel to ship things that could easily be obtained locally.
There's a great site for uk users called greenmetropolis.com. Check it out its fantastic
www.switchplanet.com has a much better system for doing this and has been around for a while now, i think they were even covered here on treehugger before.
checking swaptree it looks like they don't guarantee the trades so if you send something but don't get anything in return you're out of luck.
Heres a good video of showing how http://www.swaptree.com works. Check it out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GbCdhbXdsik