I have several ways of disposing of books I don’t want anymore. I go through several possibilities before deciding which of them a book is appropriate to be given to. First, is the book suitable as one of the presents to be given to one of my grandnephews or grandnieces for Christmas? I give them Christmas presents up to the point that they graduate from high school. (No, I have no problems with giving someone a used book in good shape as one of a bunch of presents I’m giving them at one time.) I used to give my nephews and nieces Christmas presents, but they’re too old now and one of my grandnephews is too old also. There are other people I occasionally give presents to. One person I know takes my new magazines when I’m finished with them.
Second, I think about selling it to a used bookstore or even putting it for sale online. I haven’t sold anything to a used bookstore for years now and I’ve never sold anything online. There just hasn’t been anything not worth keeping but worth trying to get someone else to make me an offer for.
Third, I have two sources that I can give to once a year or so. One is a local science fiction book club. Every December at our meetings we have a book exchange. Everybody brings some books they don’t want anymore. These are science fiction books or books about science fiction. We all throw books into several bags. We then go around the circle with people grabbing one book at a time from a bag without looking at it. They have to keep anything they grab unless they threw it in that year. At the end, people do some exchanging of what they got. They throw anything that they don’t keep themselves into a box which someone brings to some place that will take them. (For instance, the Baltimore Science Fiction Society maintains a library where they are trying to collect every science fiction book and magazine ever published, and any duplicates go into a pile which they give to students in Baltimore schools.) There is also a silent auction held at a convention held every year of an organization I belong to. I send to them or I bring along any books by or about the Inklings and any books of fantasy or about fantasy.
Fourth, there are books that don’t fit into any of these categories. I bring them to Goodwill or to a free library or any other place that takes them. I don’t have anything like thirty-year-old textbooks in computer languages no one uses anymore, so I don’t have to worry about giving away books that no one would ever conceivably use.
Of course, I don’t bring books one by one to any place. I have boxes at the back of closets to put books that I want to give away. I give them away more like one box at a time.
Yes, definitely do this–I likewise downsized a few years back and donated a metric shitload of paperbacks to LFLs. It was a really fun way to spend a couple of laid back afternoons and the variety of construction and decoration of the libraries themselves is a delight. There’s even a map available–plug in your zip code and all the little libraries will display for your convenience.
Note that the map given by SmartAleq only gives you free libraries that are officially part of the Little Free Library organization. There’s one near me which is not part of that organization. It holds 100-200 books. It’s in a hallway of a mall and can be visited whenever the mall is open.
If you have a lot I’d suggest calling ahead. I used to do some work for a landlord, including cleaning out abandoned property from rentals. My county library does take large donations but only at the central library location. And by “large” I mean two pickup trucks with the beds completely full. They also had us take everything to their loading dock in the back, but seemed quite happy about it all.
YMMV - as I said, call ahead. Maybe they want them maybe they don’t, and maybe if you have a lot they want them unloaded in a specific place.
Yo - I might be interested in those. I mean, heck, my avatar is me flying a WWII former US Army Air Corps Stearman. PM me?
Does anyone here take books from the little free libraries? Do used booksellers go through them and grab the good stuff, the way they do at thrift stores? Does anyone know anything about the circulation of those books?
Every book you drop off will be put to good use. Books are sold online to help raise funds for awesome non-profit literacy organizations changing the world through teaching kids, supporting families, building schools and filling libraries. In fact, a percentage of the net sale price of every book goes to these great causes. Any books we can’t sell are either donated directly to one of our non-profit partners or recycled.
So how do you know that no one wants your books, and that they’re worthless? I know a guy who made a list of all the books he was throwing away, and posted it on Facebook Marketplace. He had enough takers (for real money) that he expanded to Craigslist and eBay.
Hey, I’ll take that Hardy Boys book in the “boring” 1952 cover. Will you take five bucks?
If you are addressing me, I do not know. Not first-hand, at least. My Shakespeare comment was in direct response to the OP, who speculated that nobody would want Shakespeare.
Oddly enough, I did buy an early 1950s Hardy Boys book a few years ago. It has a plain brown cover, I think I paid 50 cents for it.
According to my father-in-law, the original versions of the Hardy Boys books were better. He claimed the subsequent editions were ruined in some way, details of which he did not specify. However looking on Wikipedia just now I see it has this:
Beginning in 1959, the books were extensively revised, largely to remove depictions of racial stereotypes; they were also written in a simpler, action-oriented style to compete with television.
(He wasn’t racist as far as I could tell, so he must have objected to the “dumbing-down” of the content.)
There were reprint editions of the earliest Nancy Drew books from the 30s, and they were racist also.
The 50s and 60s revisions (Tom Swift also) did away with the race problem by writing Black people out of the books entirely.
The one used bookstore left near us, Half Price books, pays so little it isn’t even worth bringing books there any more. Our library is closed also, but the main place we donate books is a Catholic charity thrift shop which has a large book department. We figure we’d overwhelm other thrift stores which small book sections.
The library I volunteer at uses BWB a lot. They provide the boxes and pay for the shipping, and when we run out of boxes, we e-mail them and they ship us some boxes (and labels) and pick up the packed boxes. I have no idea what percentage of their sales goes to us, but when the amount reaches $50, they send a check to Friends of the Library. This usually happens several times a year.
However, if you are using them for something other than garbage disposal (a surprising number of my fellow Amazon vendors brag about using BWB to discard their books with black mold and the like) send them books with bar codes, because then they can simply scan them and then slap a sticker on them.
