# What to do with all these hardback books

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-do-with-all-these-hardback-books/557661>\
**Category:** Cafe Society\
**Created:** [October 19, 2010, 2:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-do-with-all-these-hardback-books/557661 "2010-10-19T14:47:04Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![iamthewalrus\_3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/258eb7/32.png) [@iamthewalrus\_3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamthewalrus_3)\
**Post date:** [October 22, 2010, 12:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-do-with-all-these-hardback-books/557661/21 "2010-10-22T00:41:49Z")

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> [@Fried\_Dough\_Ho](#):
>
> Probably not worth much – and is it worth your time to haul them to a used bookstore, only to get a $1 or $2 each on them? I can’t tell you how many friends I have helped do this and the time it takes the bookstore buyer to go through them to find the one or two gems only to have you haul them back afterward to me seems a great waste of time.

I’m lucky in that there’s a used book store right across the street from the library.

So, anything they want (which these days, is maybe 1 book in 20), I get a buck or two for, and the others go across the street.

I tend to think that if it’s a book the book store actually wants, I’d rather sell it to them than give to the library, since that means there’s likely to be someone who really wants _that_ book enough to support the commercial enterprise, but I could be wrong.

Whatever bottom of the used book market that hasn’t already fallen out is going to so in the next ten years as people realize that it’s cheaper to give books away and buy the electronic versions than to move them from place to place and rent space to keep them. Some people will still keep books, but they’re rapidly becoming disposable items.

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