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My dad probably has several thousand books amassed. Walls, and closets full of boxes. He likes to buy books on topics of interest. As a high school history teacher, a very large amount of the books would be related to history, politics and education. A lot of other topics, including travel, etc. Now due to health issues, and moving to a smaller home, I'm trying to help him (or really, help my mom) get rid of as many books, as easily as possible, and try to get some value out of them. Selling them individually isn't a good option, they couldn't deal with the constant packing + mailing, and I live too far away to help them with that. Maybe selling lots on specific topics on eBay? Looking for ideas, and/or to hear about anybody else's experience getting rid of books.
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Jan 6, 2017 03:08
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Online is tough as books are heavy and heavy means increased shipping. Call up all the used book stores in town. If you have that many, they will likely send someone out to your home pick through them. I did this when I sold all my books after I had enough of craigslist. Most stores were fair on the price. It was funny to see one store look at a whole series and tell me that they can't give those away to then have the next store come in and snap them up claiming that they couldn't keep them in stock. MettleRamiel fucked around with this message at 04:43 on Jan 6, 2017 |
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Jan 6, 2017 04:39
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You can try half price bookstores and such, but I wouldn't expect too much. Old history/political/education/travel/etc books can be pretty hard to offload if you want to make anything off of them. There's not a lot of demand for them in the first place, and on top of that a lot of those books age poorly. Be prepared to call every used bookstore in your city.
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Jan 6, 2017 07:14
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Yeah, I would recommend used bookstores for ease, although you probably won't get the best prices for them. Still, if your dad has a ton of stuff to get rid of, you could at least use a store like that to take care of the stuff that isn't rare/potentially valuable.
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Jan 6, 2017 07:27
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Khizan posted:You can try half price bookstores and such, but I wouldn't expect too much. This guy has a very good point. In all honesty, with the types of books you describe, I feel like you are going to have to end up donating most of the lot
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Jan 6, 2017 08:35
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MettleRamiel posted:This guy has a very good point. In all honesty, with the types of books you describe, I feel like you are going to have to end up donating most of the lot Or even recycling them. Old books just aren't worth much at all for the most part unless they're a first edition of a famous work.
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Jan 7, 2017 13:14
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Thanks for the advice! Going to look into having some stores/sellers picking through the more valuable stuff, and then donating others. Getting rid of the books is a painful process, but necessary.
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Jan 7, 2017 15:42
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If they have any teenage kids begging for money all the time it might be nice to "hire" them to do it. No better experience in management and business for a teenager than this.
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Jan 7, 2017 16:38
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Juanito posted:Thanks for the advice! Going to look into having some stores/sellers picking through the more valuable stuff, and then donating others. Don't be surprised if nobody wants them as donations. The reason used bookstores don't want the books is that they're hard to move. They don't want to buy stuff that will sit around on the shelf for 3 years before they make money on it. Charity shops have the same kind of thing going where they don't want to waste shelf space on things that aren't going to move. This is especially true of political/history/travel books that get outdated and are replaced by newer books. My guess is that a public library might take them and hope to sell some at a book sale, but that they'd probably end up secretly disposing of almost all of them. Maybe they'd take some for the actual library collection, but iffy on this without actually looking at the books in question. The one thing most libraries don't have a shortage of is outdated reference materials. There's at least a fair chance you will end up having to dump a bunch of them in a recycling dumpster somewhere.
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Jan 7, 2017 23:04
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You might also think about trying senior centres and old age homes if you go the donation route. My dad was an armchair historian and had a fuckton of books on the American Civil War, WWII, Americana and that, plus my mom had loads of sewing, quilting, and knitting books and magazines. The local senior centre was always looking for books on those kind of subjects, and when we showed up, a number of the centre's members pounced like piranhas on a cow that's fallen into the Amazon. It took me a couple of trips since there were a heck of a lot of books and magazines, and all I had was a little car -- we'd pull up in front of the main doors, and there were already a couple of the older guys waiting for us. The oldies there were sick to the back teeth of people unloading whatever the latest potboiler or remaindered Book of the Month club book was on them, and the specialists books seriously went down a treat.
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Jan 8, 2017 16:00
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not sure where you are located but there is a bookstore in Detroit called John K King Books which I'm pretty sure will take absolutely everything as long as it isn't badly damaged, the place is an absurd warehouse of used books and I have come upon several collections of books in there that clearly came from a similar situation as yours
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Jan 10, 2017 13:47
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Juanito posted:Looking for ideas, and/or to hear about anybody else's experience getting rid of books. Oh hey, my brother and I used to be on the other side of this equation, we would actively scour craigslist for people wanting to get rid of books, and swing by with a uhaul and cart them all away, individually sell them for 5 bucks a pop on amazon, and donate what wouldn't sell to our local goodwill. I also worked at a used book shop once, we bought them by weight, sorted them and sold them, so with stuff like that the pricing is often by the pound/ton or pallet. Might be worth it just to toss something up on the local craigslist, the lots on ebay idea is also not too bad, if you aren't opposed to just making a tax deductible donation - Goodwill/Salvation Army is always an option.
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Jan 11, 2017 04:34
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Throw a book burning. With even the most meager of advertising you should get a fair amount of local press. Try and see if you can leverage that heavy "weirdo of the day" local press coverage into national press coverage. Then become a paid guest speaker for whatever crazy idea you were backing. Make your money work for you!
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Jan 12, 2017 03:59
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Juanito posted:Thanks for the advice! Going to look into having some stores/sellers picking through the more valuable stuff, and then donating others. Getting rid of the books is a painful process, but necessary. That's basically it. Any other option would involve a ton of hassle and legwork. Plenty of nonprofits will pick up donations if they're interested. I'd call local schools, libraries, hospitals, and art groups and ask.
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Jan 12, 2017 11:49
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Honestly old books are highly valued by interior decorators. I think they don't just buy from people though. If you have anything on Egypt or alchemy/weird stuff PM me I run a temple themed escape room and always need more props.
bad day fucked around with this message at 05:22 on Jan 13, 2017 |
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Jan 13, 2017 05:19
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OP's profile says Chile, but if their parents are in the US, The Strand in NYC buys anyone's books as decoration if the title isn't valuable or the pages are damaged and sells them at https://www.booksbythefoot.com
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Jan 13, 2017 05:57
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bad day posted:Honestly old books are highly valued by interior decorators. I think they don't just buy from people though. If you have anything on Egypt or alchemy/weird stuff PM me I run a temple themed escape room and always need more props. Half Price Books sells them by the yard - IIRC it's $8.00 for a yard of shelf space for old books. Also Half Price Books is not going to give you a lot of money - I worked there for three years, and we were explicitly trained on how much to pay, and the only thing we paid decently for was current bestsellers, new releases, and any classic literature used in school curriculum - think Tale of Two Cities, To Kill A Mockingbird, that sort of thing.
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Jan 15, 2017 00:14
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Shbobdb posted:Throw a book burning. With even the most meager of advertising you should get a fair amount of local press. Try and see if you can leverage that heavy "weirdo of the day" local press coverage into national press coverage. Then become a paid guest speaker for whatever crazy idea you were backing.
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Jan 15, 2017 01:19
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nazca posted:If they have any teenage kids begging for money all the time it might be nice to "hire" them to do it. No better experience in management and business for a teenager than this. I don't know how big your city is, but put them all in a truck and haul them to your local swap meet and have an "everything's $1" sale after you sell the valuable stuff.
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Jan 15, 2017 01:56
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Sadly, I worked for a while as a "e-commerce bookseller" at Goodwill, and they trash/shred/recycle most of the books. It's a façade that they're making any money selling your poo poo - they make their money through goverment grants for training disabled people and paying them .17 an hour. If you or your dad care about the books, and I understand caring about books, donate them to schools, homeless shelters, or retirement homes where they might get some love. You aren't going to make any money, which is dumb and lame and books are our friends.
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Jan 15, 2017 16:27
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People are really hesitant to destroy books. Probably as a result of their previous record with censorship. But the fact is probably 90% of what you have is literally garbage. Call a few bookstores or libraries or whatever, let them take what they want, then just recycle the rest. If this makes you feel bad for some reason, you can donate them to goodwill instead and they'll do it for you: appleskates posted:Sadly, I worked for a while as a "e-commerce bookseller" at Goodwill, and they trash/shred/recycle most of the books. No one wants your "intro to world history, 1987 edition" textbooks, you know? ColdPie fucked around with this message at 17:54 on Jan 15, 2017 |
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Jan 15, 2017 17:45
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I hate to tell you, but most of them are going to end up in a recycling bin. My parents had a massive library, and even after I let everyone have a free rummage, offered academic material to the local university, and tried to donate to the library, most of it got heaved out on the lawn and shovelled into dumpsters. It sucks, but most of the time, the value of books is less than the space they occupy. Dumping them on charities is a lovely move because it gives them a whole lot of work for pennies-worth of sales.
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Jan 16, 2017 00:58
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5!
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Jan 16, 2017 02:19
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Where do you live and what subjects do they cover? As a historian who still has some storage space left I might be willing to take some off your hands.
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Jan 16, 2017 03:15
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Khizan posted:My guess is that a public library might take them and hope to sell some at a book sale, but that they'd probably end up secretly disposing of almost all of them. Maybe they'd take some for the actual library collection, but iffy on this without actually looking at the books in question. The one thing most libraries don't have a shortage of is outdated reference materials.
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Jan 16, 2017 13:55
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Old books are like farm equipment. The joke goes: "What's the difference between Gonorrhea, Syphilis, and Farm Equipment?" "You can get rid of Gonorrhea and Syphilis." The books have value, but only to the person that want's them. You can buy a book for $100, but you can only get $5 for it if you want to sell it. Best is just to donate or sell them to Half Price Books. You'll only get pennies on the dollar. Look for the few that might be rare. Those you can get good money for. The bulk is barely worth the paper. I've got about 3,000 books in my house. Probably only 100 of them are worth anything. Just don't throw them away. Someone might want them. You never know. I've got all kinds of weird old stuff that you can't get anywhere but almost no-one want's them. But I did.
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Jan 19, 2017 13:05
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It is really, really hard to get rid of books--physically, emotionally, and mentally--so here's some practical advice: Start sorting on a shelf-by-shelf basis, not a box-by-box basis. If you start with boxes, you'll hurt your back, have dust allergy attacks, and get overwhelmed by adding underfoot clutter to what's in front of you. I ended up with a sinus infection that took two rounds of antibiotics to clear. (The black mould didn't help.) Get coloured tape. I used "Duck" tape from the craft store. It was nice having rolls that were big enough to wear like bracelets so I didn't lose them in the process. Find a shelf that's all things you want to get rid of, and put a stripe of red (or whatever) tape across it. If there are a couple things you want to keep, move them to another shelf, and put a stripe of green across it. Work your way along by categorizing each shelf, shifting things into Red or Green shelves as you go. I added Blue for things my brother wanted to keep, and had him move the stuff he wanted to those designated shelves. You can make a lot of progress rather quickly that way, and if you change your mind about something, you don't need to rummage in boxes to find it again. Essentially, you're separating the task of deciding from the task of packing. Once all the shelves are clearly toss or keep, you can bring in boxes. I had to hire help with the house, and the colour coding made it easy to step back and let them handle it. I also used that code with the rest of the house--furniture, decorations, closets. Red went out (one way or another, depending on how easy it was to donate), Green was shipped to my apartment, Blue was shipped to my brother's.
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Jan 19, 2017 23:26
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Ms Boods posted:You might also think about trying senior centres and old age homes if you go the donation route. My dad was an armchair historian and had a fuckton of books on the American Civil War, WWII, Americana and that, plus my mom had loads of sewing, quilting, and knitting books and magazines. You could also ask like hospitals if they would like some books. People only think of the typical, regular places to donate. There are probably places nobody thinks of that would be happy to hear "hey, you want some books?" When I was in the hospital I would very much have liked to have shelves of stuff to read. Then again with technology being everywhere that might not even be doable. If a person has a cell phone they have access to more reading material than could be read in several lifetimes. Cool as they are physical books are dying. It's going to be pretty tough to get rid of literal thousands of books anywhere but the dump unless you find out you have something rare.
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Jan 27, 2017 03:02
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Don't donate your books, do the book-bonfire instead. I say this as a person whose main gig right now is trying to get kids to read more. They do not want your not-special edition of the Federalist Papers.
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Jan 27, 2017 16:57
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N. Senada posted:I say this as a person whose main gig right now is trying to get kids to read more. They do not want your not-special edition of the Federalist Papers. The Little Free Library I pass every day seems to have a problem with people who have difficulty with throwing out useless books, so they put them in the Little Free Library. I actually took out and put in the trash 2 books that were helpful looking guides to the city's schools - published 20 years ago. I've also seen a lot of 10 years out of date tourist guidebooks and guides to Windows 95.
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Jan 27, 2017 17:07
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I have five copies of GUIDES TO USING AOL that I use as scrap paper but previously were shelved in the kids section of my library.
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Jan 27, 2017 17:20
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Get a good light shine it on the shelf and grab a decent high resolution camera and take pictures of the entire shelves and post them here. It will be easy for the goons here to get an idea of what you have if you do it. Wouldn't be surprised if someone even pays you for a few things. i used to rummage books at estate sales and people who've collected books for a long time usually have a way of sorting them. You can read alot about a person by their book collection.
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Jan 28, 2017 04:46
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BarbarianElephant posted:The Little Free Library I pass every day seems to have a problem with people who have difficulty with throwing out useless books, so they put them in the Little Free Library. I actually took out and put in the trash 2 books that were helpful looking guides to the city's schools - published 20 years ago. I've also seen a lot of 10 years out of date tourist guidebooks and guides to Windows 95. I actively clean out the nieghborhoods free libraries and carry books between them like a retarded book bee. There's like 10 with a 30 minute walk of my place. i can say some for my nieghbors have some pretty freaky reading habits.
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Jan 28, 2017 04:49
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BarbarianElephant posted:The Little Free Library I pass every day seems to have a problem with people who have difficulty with throwing out useless books, so they put them in the Little Free Library.
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Jan 29, 2017 07:47
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BarbarianElephant posted:The Little Free Library I pass every day seems to have a problem with people who have difficulty with throwing out useless books, so they put them in the Little Free Library. I actually took out and put in the trash 2 books that were helpful looking guides to the city's schools - published 20 years ago. I've also seen a lot of 10 years out of date tourist guidebooks and guides to Windows 95. Hey man, this copy of The Idiot's Guide to Windows 95 has untold historical value. You know who else destroyed books? Nazis. You're not a Nazi, are you?
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Feb 2, 2017 00:29
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ColdPie posted:Hey man, this copy of The Idiot's Guide to Windows 95 has untold historical value. Check and mate.
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Feb 2, 2017 06:07
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