Getting Books For Your Homeschool

As a homeschool family, we LOVE books, but buying all those books new can get expensive! I’m sure there are a lot of other families like ours, who are always looking for the very best deals! In this post I’d like to highlight just a few of our favorite resources for books of all kinds!

The first place we always look is Paperback Swap and I’d have to say it’s our #1 favorite resource! I came across this site when my friend Janet sent me a referral. I signed up, but it took me about a year to go back and really check it out and I almost kicked myself for not having looked around sooner! And the best thing is, it’s not just for paperback books, but ANY type of book including audiobooks.

Here is how it works: When you sign up you list 10 books that you want to get rid of, and you earn 2 credits. If someone requests one of the books you have listed, you accept their request, and mail out the book in the given time frame by media mail, although occasionally first class is cheaper. The cost to you for shipping the book is approximately $2.50 per book depending on its weight and you can either pay and print a label online, or print a label without postage and pay at the post office. If you pay and print online, then you get your credit immediately, otherwise you get your credit when the receiver marks the book received. For each book you mail you get another credit.

If you see a book you’d like to request, you just do so, and the person you requested the book from mails it out at no cost to you, aside from the credit you “spent”. Our of credits to spend? NO PROBLEM! You can purchase credits through their kiosk for approximately $3.45 each, and if you buy more then the price goes down. Also, you’ll often find other members selling credits on their extensive discussion boards. I was able to buy 5 credits last week for $10 that way. Where else can you get nearly new homeschool curriculum for the cost of shipping? I have found books by such publishers as Abeka, Alpha Omega, Christian Liberty Press, and a myriad of others!

So if you aren’t convinced yet that this is a great resource, just go check it out, and please leave some comments about your experiences there!

Another great resource for books is Project Gutenberg. This is a website that features out of print books in the public domain and to date you can find 30,000 classics on their collection. Yes, these aren’t books you can hold in your hand, unless you want to print them of course, but it’s definately a great resource and FREE! I will be honest and say though that I had one little issue with the Project Gutenberg books…you have to either read them online in HTML, or download them in plain text. Personally I like colors and images, which lead to to another search for free public domain books, and I found it: At ManyBooks.Net! Many Books claims to have 24,336 public domain books in their collection, and I do beleive that’s true! The neat thing about this site is you can download books in muliple formats such as .zip, .pdf, .pdb for Palm Pilots, and many more!

Now if you are going to download these neat books, you also need a neat way to read them right? I personally use Adobe Digital Editions. It’s a free program that can be found HERE, and once you download it, you’ll be able to organize your new found e-books into categories by making new bookshelves, you can bookmark pages as you need to stop reading, and many more visual features.

And last but not least is LibriVox! If you don’t have time to read books in the public domain, you can listen to them! That’s right! LibriVox offers 100% free downloads of books in the public domain. Each book is narrated by a volunteer.  This format is great for burning to a CD, or transferring files to your MP3 player so you can listen on the go. LibriVox also, always needs volunteers to narrate books, so if you are interested, just let them know!

Well, that’s the end of my “freebie book” list for now, but I’ll update this page as I found more resources, so please bookmark it, and check back often!