FISHTOWN - November 3, 2008 (WPVI) -- Catherine Jennings of Fishtown says if she had to pay full price for all of the books she reads, she'd be broke.

That's why she was thrilled to discover Paperbackswap.com, a website where she can trade books with other avid readers, all across the country.

Readers like Catherine go on the site and list books they have -- but are done with. For each listing, they get a credit.
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Catherine also has a wish list of books she wants to read.

The site generates emails when books from one person's wish list match up with what another person has to offer.

Each book you "order" costs you a credit. Senders pay postage to send the books. But to make it easy, the site has a function you can use to print out a postage-paid wrapper and label. Media-rate postage usually runs between $2.40 and $4.00 depending on the size and weight of the book.

A map function shows all the places Catherine has sent books to... And all the place she's received books from. And a calculator shows she's save more than $600 using the site.

New books are added to the list of what's available every hour -- so Catherine checks back in several times each day.

And the same people who run Paperback Swap also run Swap a DVD and Swap a CD -- which work the same way.

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