Summer is the perfect season to tear through a stack of books. You might already be able to picture yourself sunbathing on a beach with a drink in one hand and a book in the other. Books are great but, like summer vacation, they aren’t free.
Books are already a relatively inexpensive form of entertainment, but compared to a $15 movie ticket or $11.99 a month streaming subscription, spending around $20 on a book can be a hard sell. Luckily for you, and booklovers everywhere — there are plenty of ways you can save money on books.
Use these tips to save money as you cobble together your summer reading list.
Host a book swap
Get all of your favorite bookworms together with some cheese and crackers for a book swap at your place. Ask everyone to bring a few books that they wouldn’t mind parting with, and set them all out on a table. As you mix and mingle over food and drinks, you and your guests can browse the collection for new additions to your libraries. The best part about this party is you’ll have a great pool of candidates to ask for recommendations. When all’s said and done, you’ll have a number of new-to-you books to read, for next to nothing.
Read the classics
It takes 70 years after the author’s death for a book to enter the public domain, so many classic texts can be shared and copied for free. Check sites like The Public Domain Review and Project Gutenberg to get free copies of classic titles. Gutenberg even has user-recorded audio versions of books.
Use a subscription service
Subscription services can be a great way to save money on books after the free trial ends. Depending on your price level and how much you read, paying for a monthly subscription could end up significantly cheaper than buying a book each time you’d like to read one.
For example, as an Audible subscriber, you’ll pay $14.95 for access to the library, plus get one book credit per month, which you can use to buy any book. If you’re subscribed to Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited service for $9.99 a month, you can read an unlimited number of books in a month, but only keep 10 books on your device at a time. As another example, an $8.99 Scribd subscription gives credits for three books and one audiobook each month and unlimited access to magazines and documents.
If you’re a fan of subscription boxes, you can try a subscription box service like OwlCrate and or a number of book subscription boxes available on Quarterly. The prices and packages will range widely depending on your taste, and some boxes even add in goodies for booklovers. OwlCrate’s subscription boxes, for example, start at $29.99 and come with one new hardcover Young Adult novel and three to five items inside each monthly box. In contrast, Quarterly’s Literary Box sends once every three months and costs $50 per box, but it comes with at least three books hand-picked by the box’s featured author, and a handwritten note from that author.
Get a free advanced review copy
If you’re a particularly voracious reader, and don’t mind sharing your opinion, you may be interested in getting advance copies of books in exchange for reviews online. A number of book-related sites like Goodreads and LibraryThing host early review programs. Publishers do too, but you’ll need some insider knowledge. Sign up to receive newsletters from publishers like HarperCollins and Penguin Random House for information on how to get advanced copies.
If you’re a book blogger, you may want to consider signing up for a blog tour — when authors go from blog to blog to promote their books or organize a mass posting by several book bloggers about the upcoming title — with a company like Blogging for Books or TLC Book Tours. Finally, if you’re interested in making a little money for your reviews, you can sign up with a publishing house or use websites like Online Book Club or Nothing Binding. You probably won’t make enough to quit your day job, but at least you’ll be paid to do something you enjoy. For example, Online Book Club’s site says you won’t be paid for your first review, but after that, you’ll be paid $5 to $60 per review.
The main downside to doing this is that you may not enjoy all of the books sent to you to read.
Share a Kindle library
If you use Amazon Kindle, you can share Kindle books, apps, games, and audiobooks with friends or family members pretty easily, and you don’t have to be an Amazon Prime member to use this feature. If you want to share with friends, you can lend a book from your Kindle library to theirs for up to 14 days. Just go to your Kindle Store and select the title you want to loan out. Then enter the borrower’s email address and hit send. Beware: They have to delete the book from their Kindle Library for you to get it back. Also keep in mind a Kindle book can only be loaned once, so if anyone else asks you to borrow the title, they’re out of luck.
If you want to get your entire family reading, try a Family Library. It requires at least two adults with Amazon accounts to join an Amazon Household, you both can then add child accounts. You and the other adult will see all of the books in the Library, while the children will only be able to see “shared” books. You can also share Kindle books borrowed from a public library and those loaned to you via personal lending.
Use the 72-hour rule
Journalist and money expert Carl Richards came up with the “72-hour rule” to hack his bad habit of buying every book he wanted on Amazon, ending up with a pile of unread titles.
Now, Richards says he lets a book sit in his shopping cart for at least 72 hours before hitting “buy.” The trick helps him save money on books because he only buys books he’ll actually read. You can apply a similar rule to your purchasing process to save on books yourself. The 72-hour time frame isn't set in stone. You can set the wait for as long as you need, as long as it gives you enough buffer time to think about your purchase before you buy.
If you can empathize with Richards’ problem in other areas of your budget, you may want to check out what we wrote about how you can apply the 72-hour rule to your spending habits here.
Buy used books
Used books are a great way to save on popular titles. Try visiting used bookstores or online book retailers like Amazon, eBay, thriftbooks.com, or AbeBooks.com for used reads. They’re typically cheaper than brand new ones, but hold the same great content. The downside to this savings strategy is you’ll probably have to wait to get the physical book shipped to you before you can read it. In that case, always look for free shipping to save.
Unfortunately, this strategy may not work for you if you’re strictly a digital reader.
Get a book for free online
You could get several books for free this summer just by knowing your way around the web.
As of this writing, signing up for a subscription service like Audible or Scribd will usually earn you a free book or at least a couple of weeks on a free trial. These are great options if your budget is too tight to afford a subscription and you can knock out a book in the two weeks before the free trial ends. If you’re an Amazon Prime member, you can get one free book a month from the Kindle Owner's Lending Library.
Visit a public library
You’re probably well aware of this resource since it’s funded with your tax dollars, but here’s a quick reminder to support your local library. You can visit your local library to borrow as many books as you want for free. All you need to borrow books is a library card, which is also free. If you don’t know where your local library is located, you can consult Google or check out the database on PublicLibraries.com.
You might not even need to leave your house to borrow a book from your local library. If your library offers e-book lending, you could log in to your account on their site and borrow a book for free from the comfort of your couch. Search OverDrive.com or the Libby app (by OverDrive) on any device to find and borrow e-books available for lending near you. You’ll need a student ID or library card number to borrow, then you can download the e-books to read offline on all of your devices, including the Kindle or Kindle app, Nook, or another e-reader for the lending period.
MagnifyMoney is a price comparison and financial education website, founded by former bankers who use their knowledge of how the system works to help you save money.