Are you sure about that? An older relative of mine tried to get rid of a set of World Book Encyclopedias and couldn’t find any takers. The space they take up, the weight, and their obsolescence aren’t worth it with a constantly-updating, lightweight, internet around.
If they don’t have internet, it’s probably cheaper for them to get one than to come take somebody’s encyclopedias.
I recently sold about twenty used books in great condition on Amazon - netted around $100. They were almost all scrapbooking books, with a couple of textbooks. Amazon fees are high. Still, more money than I probably could have gotten out of the books than anything else I’m aware of.
Do it a little bit at a time. Go in there and look for some books that you could do without. Donate those to charity or sell them. Repeat when you feel ready. When you’re in a mood where you feel more willing to get rid of books than you usually are, take advantage of it and do some culling. It won’t all get done at once, but at least you’ll be making progress.
CrimeScene, you have other options. Put them in sturdy boxes or bins and rent a storage container. Put them under beds. Stack them and toss a nice cloth over the stack – voila, an occasional table! If your books aren’t already double-stacked in your bookcases, double-stack them. Do you have attic space? A dry basement?
As a last resort, keep the books that would be difficult to replace, that you will re-read, or that have sentimental value, and donate the rest.
I’ve disposed of hundreds of books over the years. Except for a couple that became collectible, I don’t regret it.
Once again, I want to thank all of you for your input, it has indeed made me feel better. As for my wife, she isn’t so much making me get rid of them as requesting that something be done with them. My mother will be living in the space that is being used as a library and she said she is fine with the books being in there, but I just feel it is best of me to get my stuff out of there since she will be helping with bills and other expenses.
I liked the idea that was set forth to get rid of them in increments. That way, I won’t feel as if the whole collecting and organizing process I went through was a waste. I imagine I’ll start the liquidation by parting with all the worthless college text books my wife and I both have. I have my degrees and in history and she has hers in psychology, so that is topic area most of our books fall in.
Should I donate to the textbooks? I imagine most of them are outdated and I can’t imagine any place that even wants them on their hands.
IME, nobody will buy an old textbook. I’d donate them to the Sallies or Goodwill. We ended up donating about 16 boxes of books after failing to find anybody willing to take them, including the library.
Half Price Books will. They have bought old textbooks from me. They didn’t give me much money for them, but they did buy them.
No one will ever give you anywhere near what you paid for a textbook, but you probably knew that.
I was looking at the old encyclopedias my parents have when I visited them this weekend, and thinking this. I’m not looking forward to the day when my sister or I inherit those encyclopedias and have to do something with them.
This is a good place to start.
Another advantage to not getting rid of all your books at once: books are heavy. It’s hard physical work taking them to a store, even if you can park right outside the store and use a cart.
I think that it would be kinder to Goodwill and the Salvation Army (which is what I assume you mean by “the Sallies”) to just throw the old textbooks in the trash. It’s unfortunate but true that no one can use textbooks that are more than about five years old. Goodwill and the Salvation Army would have to throw those textbooks into their own trash when they couldn’t sell them, and having the trash hauled away costs them money.
Anne Neville, did Half Price Books give you enough money for those textbooks to make up for the cost of mailing the books to them, the cost of driving to the post office, and maybe something for the time you spent packing them and driving to the post office?
Just as an FYI - Please, for the love of all that is literary, don’t take textbooks to a public library.
Most public libraries have a specific collection policy, and won’t add textbooks to the collection.
If you donate them, most libraries will take them (it’s bad form to turn people away) and then the books will be either immediately recycled, or given to a Friends organization who will try desperately to unload them for several years before finally taking a razorblade to them and dropping the textblocks into the recycling. Everyone involved feels bad when this happens. Please don’t make us have to do it more.
If you have location-specific history books (not textbooks) check and see if your libraries have state or local history departments (don’t forget school or academic libraries, as well as archives and historic commission deposits). They might would be interested. You won’t get any money for them, but if they are taken specifically by someone from those libraries, you’ll have the satisfaction of KNOWING that the books are going to be actually cataloged and used.
Some crafters like to make altered books, that is, they take old books and glue things to them, or into them, and use various paints on them. For a while, there was a fad of making purses out of old books. This is about the only realistic use of old textbooks that I know of.
I didn’t mail them, I drove out to our local Half Price Books.
They probably chucked them in the recycle bin as soon as I left. But they took them off my hands. And I didn’t have to feel bad for throwing out books.
Sorry to get picky with you, but if you drove to Half Price Books, you wasted gas. And I realize how snide this is going to sound, but thinking that you’re doing better by giving books to someone else so they can throw them into the dumpster instead of you doing so is like feeling better because you assigned someone else to commit a murder instead of doing it yourself. The really astonishing thing is that Half Price Books paid you anything for the textbooks.
I don’t know about prisons, but the local county jail will take books, especially novels. Also a nonprofit residential substance abuse treatment center will.
If you don’t mind spending some time to get some money for them, it wouldn’t hurt to try a few Ebay auctions, selling them in lots, before donating or trashing them. Check on Amazon or Ebay completed auctions to find anything of value, then try selling some of your fairly valuable books first. If anything is valuable enough to sell on its own, try listing it on Amazon or as an Ebay BIN. I sold an old book on Amazon for over $100 that I had purchased from Goodwill for $4.
I have a hobby bookstore and sell on Amazon all the time–a couple of books a week, which is not big volume but I make a few bucks on it.
It sounds like you’d rather see them go to someone who will read them rather than use them for kindling. If so, selling them individually is the way to go; a bookstore will trash most and sell a few. Library donation is also a good option, they sell them at the annual extravaganza (I’ve bought many there) and then get rid of the rest.
My suggestion, echoing several above, is check a bunch on Amazon (don’t bother with Abe, Alibris, Biblio, etc.–Amazon price is the real-world price). Do the ones that have ISBNs; looking up the others will be more trouble than it’s worth unless you’re convinced you have a valuable item. Any that show on Amazon for $0.01 are kindling (or keep for sentimental value).
That said, it’s quite possible that even the Amazon price is bogus–since you have no way of knowing if any have sold at that price. Also, rare/pricey items sell less often (duh). Try eBay and check the completed auctions (also as suggested upthread) which will give you a better idea–if you can find one.
The literal bottom line: if you check 100 on Amazon and they’re all listed for under $10 it’s unlikely that you’re going to get enough to justify the effort unless you’re doing it for fun (which I am). On the other hand, if you’re getting some personal satisfaction out of the fact that the ones you sell are going to someone who will use them, it might be worth it.
At my library’s bookstore, they sort the donations. Those that they think will sell go into the bookstore. Some religious books go to a religious charity. Those that they think won’t sell go on a freebie case outside the bookstore and are usually picked clean quickly. If they’ve been on the bookstore shelf a while mysteries, thrillers and westerns are donated to the VA hospital, the rest are put on the freebie shelf, or sold for $1/grocery bag.
What if I wanted to go there anyway? I like shopping at a big discount bookstore.
I think it’s more like how someone in a firing squad is given a blank, so that the people on the firing squad can reassure themselves that they might not have killed someone. There’s a chance that they did sell my old textbooks. I don’t think it’s a very good chance, but there is a chance.
If they didn’t want to take textbooks, or books that they will have to recycle, they could change their store policy on what they will buy. There is no law saying that used bookstores have to take anything a customer wants to sell. They have chosen to operate their business that way.