How to pick up a stack of good books for next to nothing

For the cost of a stamp, online swap shops offer a huge choice of titles, says Huma Qureshi

There's nothing more perfect than a lazy Sunday lounging in the garden (or park, or on the beach), under the shade of a leafy tree or stripy parasol, with a good book to get your nose into.

Just don't leave organising your summer reading to the last minute - or you could end up paying £15 for two paperbacks you never really want to read, picked up at some grotty service station or airport duty-free.

Trawling a local library, second-hand bookshop or charity shop is an obvious way to avoid paying top publishing prices at high-street stores, but there are plenty of ways to save online too.

Here are our favourite money-saving, bookworm websites:

If you've hoarded every book you have ever bought, register the ones you are unlikely to read again here and exchange them for someone else's. It saves you money (you only pay postage) and is also a good way of recycling your books.

There are currently more than 258,000 books listed for swaps on ReadItSwapIt, but the disadvantage is that swaps do have to be mutual - so even if you find a book you want to read, there is no guarantee that the other party will want one of yours.

If you want to make a bit of money from your unwanted books rather than just swap them, this site is perfect. Upload the details of your old books, and for every one you sell you will be paid £3 (though you will have to cover the postage cost).

And if you want to buy yourself something to read, every single title costs £3.75 (including postage on standard-size paperbacks), with 5p of every sale going to the Woodland Trust charity. Most books are in exceptionally good quality - link your Green Metropolis account to your Facebook page to increase your chances of selling.

If you want access to a global library, try this international book swap site, which has books up for grabs from Costa Rica to China and just about everywhere else in the world.

List used books for "mooching" ("borrowing without intending to return") and you'll earn a point for every book you give away, which you can then use to mooch a book from someone else (or donate your points to charity).

You have to pay postage on books you send out, which could add up if your books attract readers overseas, but on the plus side there is huge variety here and if you browse carefully you'll be able to get hold of books that haven't been published in the UK.

There are some great bargains to be picked up at Bananas, the online clearance shop for You do have to pay £3.50 for standard postage, but the savings could make it worth your while.

There's a brilliant children's range - the CS Lewis classic The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe for £1; a set of 10 Jacqueline Wilson books for £7 or eight prize-winning fiction titles for £4.

Adults can snap up the Penguin Celebrations Collection of 14 books (by authors such as Zoë Heller, Nick Hornby and Ali Smith) for £7.50 (recommended retail price of £111).

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