How To Dispose Of Your Books In A Humane Manner

Is your book collection getting out of hand? Are your bookshelves groaning from the weight of your ever-expanding collection? Do you find it hard to part from your books, even the ones that no longer serve you? You know you need to cull, if only to make space for more new books, but you want to know that the ones you’re grudgingly disposing of will be going to someone who will cherish them and give them a good home. Here are some ways to make the process easier for you.

1. SELL THEM BACK

A hot book beckons you and 428 people have already signed up for it at the local library. It’ll be months before you get to read it, so you bite the bullet and buy it online. You devour the book within days. You like it but decide it’s not a keeper. How to recoup your costs? Easy—sell it back to amazon or wherever you bought it online, if they have this option.

If it’s a recently-published, popular, or ‘hot’ title, chances are if you read fast, you can sell it back at a good price while it’s still in high demand. I have done this with best-selling novels that I bought within months of publication. It’s also possible with books that were published a few years ago but now has a movie tie-in. If you try to sell back older books, you’ll find that the price is pretty dismal, unless it’s rare or out-of-print, in which case there might be a niche market for it. Always check to see what the other sellers on amazon are selling their copies for, then adjust your price to just below the lowest, if that’s feasible.

It may not be worth the effort if it’s a huge, heavy, hardcover that will push your postage up prohibitively. Even though amazon has a separate fee for postage, it’s minimal and will not, at least in Canada, cover the exorbitant postage for heavy items.

2. JOIN BOOKMOOCH

This amazing site is free to join. You list the books you want to give away in your inventory, then wait for other members to ‘mooch’ it from you. When they do, you send them the books, you pay the postage, and you get paid in points. You get more points if you send internationally, but then you pay more for postage, so don’t include heavy books in your inventory. With the points you amass, you are now able to ‘mooch’ books from other members. Browse around the site or search for a particular book. You can even set up your own wishlist right there on the site, and get notified when a copy of your wished-for books is available. I have been a member for 4 years, have given away 51 books and have mooched 48 books, both locally within Canada and from all over the world. A word of advice to potential Canadian moochers: Do choose to send to US, as that’s considered international and you get 3 points for each book (as opposed to only 1 point if you were to send it within Canada) as the postage to US is often comparable to or even less than sending within our country.

3. JOIN BOOKCROSSING

This site allows people to ‘release’ or set free their books, at a specific and specified place, then post the location on the site, allowing other members to find it, and hopefully, give it a good home. There are bookcrossing stickers you can place within the books, and these books’ journeys are often logged on the site by their finders. To make it safer for the poor books, many people only 'release' their books in a clearly-defined and reputable place (e.g. a local coffee shop whose manager has kindly set up a box or basket designated for bookcrossing), but some poor books do get lost in the ‘wild’, probably nothing sinister, most often just taken by someone who has never heard of bookcrossing in the first place.

4. DONATE TO THE LOCAL LIBRARY

This may seem like a no-brainer, but local libraries are getting more snooty about donated books. Our local ones have always refused books in poor condition, which is understandable enough. After all, who wants to read a book that’s falling apart? But some also refuse books whose pages have a faint yellow tinge, even though the book itself is in great shape and completely unmarked. Some condo buildings now have their own libraries, little more than a room downstairs, but there are bookshelves there, full of books and magazines that will not make it to the local library. Perhaps that will serve as a last resting-place for the books you refuse to contemplate recycling, if you live in such a condo.

5. DONATE TO CHARITY

Some charities do accept books for re-sale in their shops and some even have book bins in public places. Give your local one a call and find out. Do not put your unwanted books in the bins meant for clothing and never on the ground beside full bins. Your poor books will be trashed for sure.

6. REPURPOSING

If you have an artistic bend, you may enjoy re-creating your unwanted books into works of art. If you enjoy creative arts and crafts, you may want to turn your old books into 'altered' books or into hollow books, each with its own secret hiding-place. If you're of a practical bend, you may look upon your books as workshop material and turn them into home appliances like a lamp or a home for your ipod or even furniture such as, irony of ironies, a bookshelf or a bookcase. And full circle have we come, where the poor books that were taking up space are themselves transformed to give you more room for more books.

7. RECYCLE

A last resort, granted, but let’s face it. Those textbooks from your youth will not serve anyone anymore, least of all you. Those westerns from your granddad are falling apart and brown with age. The space they take up on your shelves could be filled by spanking new books that will look and smell great. Steel yourself to do the task. Give them a new lease of life (when they get recycled into whatever it is that old books get recycled into). Don’t hold them back. Just say to yourself, at least they’re not being trashed and ending up in land-fill. You’re doing your little part in living green.