If you are a fan of mail rental services such as Netflicks, you might be interested in other rental services, such as booksfree.com. With booksfree.com, you can rent out paperback books and audio books and have them delivered in the mail.
How does booksfree.com work? Basically the same way that a DVD rental service does. You pay a monthly fee that is based on the level of service that you would like to have. You then order your books. They are delivered to you through the United States Postal System. You can keep the books for as long as you like. Once you mail back the books, the service then sends out your next selections.
There are no shipping charges or due dates on any of the books, and the service claims to offer more than 100,000 titles. Books can be purchased for a discount, if you decide to keep a selection.
Cost of the service ranges from $9.99 to $42.49 per month. The price determines how many books you can have out, whether you can have multiple orders out at the same time and if you can rent CDs and other types of media.
Personally, I think this service has its pros and cons. It is a definite step in the right direction for someone who consumes lots of books in a month and pays full price for them. It is also super convenient for someone who lives in a very rural area or who can’t get out to a store or library.
But for me, I can save much more money by borrowing books from the library and shopping books sales. For example, for the $9.99 price, you can rent 2 books at a time per month. At the library, I can check out an almost unlimited amount of books for three weeks at a time for free. Sure, I still have to drive to the library, so that is a factor, but I still think it is a better value. And yes, the library does have fees.
If I wanted to purchase my books from the library or a book sale, I could get anywhere from 10 to 25 books for that same $10 that the rental service costs, and I would get to keep the books instead of returning them.
To visit booksfree.com, click here. http://www.booksfree.com
Mary Ann Romans writes about everything related to saving money in the Frugal Blog, technology in the Computing Blog, and creating a home in the Home Blog. You can read more of her articles by clicking here.
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