As home schoolers, it is useful to have a collection of readers on hand in your own library for your kids to read. It can get expensive to continually buy them and there are times where utilizing the public library can be a hassle because it can be difficult to find the book that you want at your Wake County branch.

In a previous article we looked at renting books on line. While this is a great option, it does cost money. PaperBackSwap.com is free to join and it does exactly as its title claims: It is a paperback book swap sight; the only cost to you is shipping. In order to get started, you have to post books of your own that you are willing to part with. When someone requests your books, you print out a shipping label directly from the site and mail out the book. Once the book is received, you get credit and can begin requesting books of your own. It's that simple. Click here for a full tutorial.

So why use a site like this? For starters, if you are part of a book club, group or co-op, it can be difficult for all of you to get your books from the library or you could be on a budget and purchasing new books all of the time may not work for you. For most of us, however, our home libraries can tend to grow beyond our comfort zone and using something like PaperBackSwap.com can help you recycle your books without having to go to a used book store or having a yard sale!

This site not only deals with paperback books, but you can find some hard cover books as well as home school curriculum. When you request books, you can put specifications on them such as 'from a non-smoking home, please' or 'unabridged version, please' - this is something that you normally cannot do if you are purchasing from a used book store.

PaperBackSwap.com also has a couple of sister sites that swap DVD's and CD's. You can get the link to these sites through the main one. So for an inexpensive way to refresh your in-home library and to find new books for your family, check this site out. It can be a real money saver!