Decluttering? 10 Great Ways to Get Rid of Unwanted Books

4. Book donation drop boxes

Better World Books maintains big metal Green Book Donation boxes in parking lots in more than a dozen states. It resells the donations online and vows to donate one book to a nonprofit for every book sold. The company recycles remainders. Individual libraries and other organizations also run collection boxes. 

5. Book swaps

Gather friends or neighbors and ask everyone to bring a book, or books, and trade. Nicole Wiebe is a book lover who first hosted a book swap with friends in a Denver park in 2022, and has gone on to start bookswapsociety.com. Her group usually sets up in public venues like breweries and charges a $5 entry fee, but the Book Swap Society’s methods are easy to duplicate for free anywhere. First, set a time limit. She suggests two hours. Settle on the number of books each person can bring and take away, and create space for participants to lay out books in categories. Donate leftovers. 

6. Libraries

Many public libraries accept donations and provide a receipt for tax write-offs. The books might go into the collection or be sold by a Friends of the Library group. The Friends of the Studio City Library runs a popular monthly sale at that busy branch of the Los Angeles Public Library, for example, with books priced to move at around 50 cents for paperbacks and up to $4 for deluxe coffee table books. “All our proceeds go back to the library to fund their programs or to buy extra books,” said Friends Treasurer Albert Ang, a financial consultant. The leftovers are passed on to other charities.  

7. Other nonprofits/charities

Nonprofits, from the tiniest church-run shop to major players like the Salvation Army, Goodwill and Vietnam Vets, want your books. In certain areas they may even send a truck to your house and cart them away, ideal for major clear-outs. The hauling service Pick Up Please, which coordinates with nonprofits, is a popular vehicle for this. Check with your favorite charity or pickupplease.org to see if your area is served. (Remember to get a receipt for taxes.)  

Donated books, and other media like CDs, are the stars at stand-alone Goodwill bookstores. “We try to give every book a chance,” says Christian Reese, the manager at the Goodwill Bookstore in Tupelo, Mississippi, where most books sell for $4 and under, and the drive-through drop-off center is not picky. Reese says she would rather sort through a huge bag of donations than lose out on a treasure. (Goodwill donations are sold online, too, at GoodwillBooks.com.)

The Savers thrift store chain also takes books, and a portion of the proceeds go to designated nonprofits. 

8. Donations by mail

You can mail books to nonprofits that collect them for those who cannot easily access books. OperationPaperback.org sends books to veterans and troops abroad, including kids’ books for deployed parents to read remotely to their children. There are also Prisonbookprogram.org, which serves the incarcerated nationwide, and Books for Africa.

9. Secondhand bookstores

Find out if a nearby used bookstore is accepting donations or buying books. Some pay cash or give store credit, but they’re likely to pay only a small percentage of the prices listed on Amazon and eBay. Like many used bookstore owners, John K. King, of John K. King Used & Rare Books in Detroit, makes house calls to assess whole libraries, while store manager Debra Lee goes through the boxes that would-be sellers lug in. She suggests vetting your collection over the phone first. For instance, she always snaps up books on Michigan history. Some categories, like military history, classic book sets by the American Library or Loeb are perennial favorites, too. Every collection is worth a look, and tastes are always changing. “I’ll get somebody that has, maybe, a ‘70s’ library, but I’m not interested in it. But maybe someone has a ‘60s’ library, and it’s Beat Generation authors and I’m excited about that,” Lee says.

10. Book-sale apps and websites

Online book resale sites have mushroomed — there are so many that at least one website, Bookscouter.com, is devoted to assisting sellers by ranking what online buyers will pay for a used book on different sites. (It’s typically pennies on the dollar.) Online buyers include Powell’s Books, the venerable Portland, Oregon, bookseller, and Thriftbooks.com. You scan or enter a book’s ISBN barcode with your phone or computer, then follow mailing directions. Obviously, these systems work best for books published after the early 1970s, when books started having International Standard Book Numbers, ISBNs. (The number is on a barcode on the back of the book or on the copyright page.)  

If you have a first edition that you think may have real value, check out websites like AbeBooks, AddALL and Biblio to get an idea of your treasure’s worth. The Rare Books and Manuscripts Section (RBMS) of the Association of College and Research Libraries also has info on the value of certain kinds of books.  

Major e-retailers like Amazon, eBay and Etsy are where an individual seller will get the highest, retail-level price for any used books, but selling this way is very time consuming. You need to open a shop on the site; photograph and write detailed descriptions of each book; monitor sales; and mail books. Platforms charge various fees: eBay, 14.95 percent; Amazon, 15 percent; Etsy, 6.5 percent, and books must be vintage. Abebooks.com takes 8 percent and charges a monthly fee of $25 and up based on how many books you list for sale. 

Another option is to list books for sale and local pickup on Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist.

Still have some books you're pretty sure nobody wants? Creative Book Art by Claire Youngs or Playing With Books: The Art of Upcycling, Deconstructing, and Reimagining the Book by Jason Thompson can help you repurpose those forsaken pages into a work of art. You can find used copies online for less than $10.