Getting Books (Alternate Ways)

I've gotten a lot of used books from Amazon; I think Noddy has, too. A lot of these books can be had for a penny plus shipping. Had one lost last week -- they gave me a refund and told me to keep the book if it eventually showed up.

I adore Amazon second hand. I've probably bought several hundred books from them and had only one major snafu. In that case Amazon checked and promptly refunded my money. Beware. You have instant access to a fix at any hour of the day or night.

If you're interested in a particular book, Google for "Title Excerpt". Publishers and authors frequently post "free" chapters on their web pages. Also every book that is reviewed in the NYT's has a sample chapter posted on the NYT's site.

Some titles--especially in genre fiction--are available as e-books, through Amazon.

Getting books (alternate ways)
I don't think you'd find complete texts of recent/current/new books because of copyright laws. After all, authors need to sell their books, not just have them read; this is how they live, or hope to, anyway. Gutenberg is very precise in their copyright standards: not only must the original copyright have expired, but also the copyright of the particular edition in question, so no joy there.

But aside from Amazon, there's always eBay; quite often you don't have to bid, there's a set price for anyone who wants to buy at once.

Booksamillion is good.

I would warn people to beware of one thing (but this refers to older books, of course) and that is to check with the dealer if you're getting a used book to make sure it isn't moldy. Once I ordered, a copy of And there's always the other problemsomething remembered from my childhood back in the Stone Age, and had to ditch it because the smell was so strong.

I like the exchange idea, but when I tried bookmooch it wouldn't come up.

And yes, the strain on the pocketbook can be considerable.

Finally, there's always the other problem: so many books, so little time.

You may want to try swaptree.com. I haven't used it yet myself, however, you can trade books, dvds, video games for free. What you do is list the books, etc that you want to trade and list the books, etc you want. Swaptree will match you up. All you do is pay the shipping.

Here is a quote from the website "Use the post office's Media Mail service and you can send almost everything for less than $2.50. Better yet, if you want, we'll try to find a trade for you with a swaptree member right down the street, or with one of your friends or co-workers, so you can just forget about postage and hand your item over in person. "