12 Ways to Save Money on Books

2. Read Online

You can read many books online for free. Project Gutenberg has thousands of public-domain books that that are free to download and read. You can also check out Google Books to see the full text of books they have already scanned into their system.

For those who enjoy audio books, you can go to LibriVox, which offers free audio book downloads.

3. Become a Book Reviewer

Most people never consider this option, but if you enjoy a particular genre of books, you can get the latest releases for free if you become a book reviewer.

The easiest way is to write a review for your local newspaper (offer to write one for free, and your offer will almost always be accepted), but if you blog about a certain subject, you can often get review copies of related books simply by asking. Contact the publisher and ask for a review copy of the book for the blog or newspaper that you write for.

4. Read What You Already Have

Chances are that you have a number of books on your bookshelves that you have never read for one reason or another. Take a look and read those that you have been meaning to read before purchasing new books.

5. Share

If you have family, friends, co-workers or members of social networks who have similar reading tastes as yourself, you can start a book exchange. You lend your books and borrow books from others, and everyone gets new reading material without having to buy it.