Magnificent... get swapping! (readitswapit.co.uk)

Member Name: topherbenn

Product:	readitswapit.co.uk
Date:	10/05/09 (108 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great idea, easy & free to use, just costs the postage of your book for the book you've requested!

Disadvantages: Swaps aren't always successful, but don't worry, just request it from another user!

Got a pile of books lying around and are desperate to read something new? 'Readitswapit' is the perfect site for you to swap your books for others that you'd like to read.

I found this site a few months back, and it's quickly becoming one of my most used sites. The concept behind it is genius; read your books, post them online in your online library, find books from other users that you'd like to swap and wait for them to accept the swap. Alternatively you can wait for swap requests and then choose a book from the users library. All it costs is the postage, and at 2nd class, I find I don't pay much more than a pound per book.

Registering is easy, and from there the first thing you should do is upload all the books you have lying around that you no longer want. There are books that I wanted to keep, those favourites I read over and over again, however the ones that are lying around are just wasting space around the house, so get rid of them. To upload books it's a simple as typing in the ISBN of the book, choose the condition of your book, highlight any damage, choose a genre and give it a rating. There is an optional box to tell users anything you want to about the book, though I've tended to leave this blank. All it takes is a couple of minutes per book! The ease of this and possible benefits only made me want to use the site more.

Next it's up to you whether you choose to wait around for users to request your books, and hope that they have a book you want to read, or alternatively browse through the thousands of books available and start requesting some swaps. As a new users you can only have five requests on the go at once, however the more completed swaps you have the more you can request at once so it ensures that as a new users you don't request hundreds of books and aren't able to complete them all, it settles you in nicely, and doesn't get too much too soon.

Requesting books is simple, once you've found the book you want all you need to do is decide which user you will request it from, usually there are a number of users all offering the book you want so pick one and click 'request book'. Unfortunately it's from here that as a new user you may get frustrated and loose interest in the site...

If you request a book, the user does not have to accept the request; usually responding with 'I've read all the books from this user', or 'I don't want to read any of their books at the moment'. You have to preserve; at the start I got quite a number of rejections, maybe because I only had five books uploaded (tip - upload as many as you can to ensure more successful swaps). However I just went back around and requested the same book from a different user and finally I was successful. If you really want the book you'll be persistent and it will pay off.

Once swaps have been confirmed all it takes is for you to package your book up, pop down to the post office and get it sent. Once sent, be sure to click the 'I've sent this book' on the active swaps page so the other user knows what stage of the swap it's at. Hopefully all will be done in a few days and voila, you've got your first book from 'readitswapit' for a measly 70p (average 2nd class small book) and a few minutes work.

I can't really say a bad word about the site, it does exactly want it says on the tin and the only downside is if another user doesn't accept the swap, but when there are multiple listings of the same book this doesn't really become a problem.

I just can't get enough of the site and what's great is that you will never find you haven't got a book to swap! Read it, then swap it, all in a days work!

Summary: A great site I wish I had know about way back! Don't hord up books you've read, swap them!