What to do with "excess" books?

I have miscellaneous books that I don't want to keep, but aren't worth enough to try selling as individual books. Most are softcover, age ranges from older vintage to fairly recent, genres include fiction, cookbooks, small art books, literary works, and other nonfiction.

I'd love suggestions on what to do with them?

Thanks...

 

Hi,
Don't ask me I have boxes of them. When I was little I was told books are your best friends, so I never dump best friends. lol
greg

 

I give my "non-keepers" to GW. There was a time in the mid-late 90's that the city library where I was a the time would take donated books and sell them at their annual fundraising sale. Really helped to get rid of Hubby #2's mother's endless "romance novels." Plus it was a tax deduction at about 50% of the publisher's price.

I had to downsize significantly in preparation for the cross-country move and I tried selling what I decided to part with at a yard sale. $1 each for recent hardcovers and 50 cents for the few paperbacks. No takers. Even had one old bat who struggled all the way up the long driveway, headed straight for the books, turns to me with an angry face and tells me I'm asking too much. I donated them all the next week.

 

Another idea is to see if any assisted living residences in your area are in need of additions to their residents' library. I was able to fill a few shelves at the place my mom moved to from her stash of "large print" books.

 

I like the suggestions so far -- my favorite method is to donate to a library. I did downsize my book collection several years ago. Mine were mostly nonfiction, and many were academic or quasi-academic in nature. I sold some to a local bookstore near the campus where I work. The ones they didn't purchase were given to the university library where I work. They added some to their collection, and others went to their book sale. Donating to a public library is often a good thing to do, especially if there is a book sale associated with it.

 

When we closed out our online book store after about 10 years, I kept a little over 700 of the better books, which are still on another online. The other 7,000 or so, I gave to a lady in a small community wanting to start a library. A great many of them were already ex-lib and common hard to sell books ranging from probably $5-$20. I had tried selling the lot but not many sellers want 7,000 common books, hence no takers. The lady way tickled to get them.

 

Lots of good ideas here... thanks!

For vintage books that aren't rare, if they have that yucky old cigarette smell are they not a good candidate to donate anywhere?

I haven't tried yet to get rid of the smell with the various methods I've read, like cat litter, charcoal, etc., so haven't a clue how likely they are to work.

 

LOL @ not dumping books because they're best friends!

 

Pat, you may already realize but I thought it appropriate to mention anyway: if you put a "stinky" book on the shelf with ordinary books, the other books may pick up the odors quickly, whether cigarette smoke or mold.

I have had some luck listing bulk lots of books by the hundreds but I don't ask much for a bulk lot. I just wanted them to go to a good home. I've used "for pickup only" methods. Best of luck to you and your overflow of books.

I think a library that has an annual booksale is an excellent suggestion. In fact I didn't know that a donation value would be worth so much as half of cover price for tax purposes. Thank you.

 

Oh dear. I wouldn't really recommend trying to take a 50% deduction in today's tax environment. I was referring to what was allowable back in the 90's, before the IRS got wise to the excessive nature of letting the taxpayer decide how much donated items were worth to the non-profit (up to a certain point value-wise no appraisal or charity statement of what was realized was required.) They've changed those rules significantly.

 

I'm not much of a bookie

Supply vastly exceeds demand

They go in the recycle bin here

 

Thank you for the clarification, Bakersgma!
*hearts*

 

Oh dear! You may be recycling $$$... I just give away books that I read to friends or to a lady who stocks the public library carts with books to sell to raise money.

 

Antidiem, good point about books picking up odors from other books. I'm afraid I don't have a lot of leeway in this area, though, since I'm limited in space and where I can put the books.

Terry, some days I wish I could just toss all the books I have, but they're not all excess. Some are collectible and worth a nice amount. With the excess ones, I have tossed a few that were in poor condition.

Has anyone had success in getting rid of cigarette smell in books?

 

cigarette smoke and musty (not moldy) odors..............accommodating sized plastic bag inserted with potpourri, carpet powder, fresh or dried garden herbs, room deodorants, etc. anything that smells good. No liquids. Place the book inside on a bakers drying rack on it's end, fanned open. Seal bag and check back after several weeks. Should at least get rid of most odor. The same also works in a large plastic tub for several books. There are other ways, but this works for me.

 

Pat, The only thing I've done with smelly books is to air them out for a while.

I did purchase a hard plastic doll once from an eBay seller and it came to me reeking of smoke. Some people on the Dolls board suggested a variety of methods. What I did was put it in a shoe box with a container of baking soda (the type where you can tear off a panel on the side and there is a thin fabric that allow air to get in). I left them both in there for a while ... It was probably a few weeks, but that might not have been necessary. The doll no longer smelled like smoke after that.

I'm not sure that would work with a lot of books, just due to the large numbers.

I just found this online -- some ideas from a library on how to get rid of the smoke smell from books:

http://parkslibrarypreservation.wordpress.com/2011/06/30/stinky-books/

Hm, I just realized that was posted by the library at Iowa State University, less than a couple of hours away from where I live. I see they recommend a particular product that you might want to try.

 

Note: In thinking of what I did with the doll, it was not in a regular cardboard shoebox... it was in a plastic container just a little larger than a typical shoebox. So in some ways it was similar to what Iowa State did with their books, but on a different scale.

 

Women's prisons. Remove from your group anything really valuable that you might be able to sell, or give to someone with the same interest as the book covers, and then most of the others can go off to ladies who need some "beach books," how-to's, history, art, cookbooks, etc. (Oh -- and eliminate anything that explains how to use laundry chutes or broken bricks as escape methods. We don't want the warden getting cross with you. )

 

Thanks for the replies, everyone... very helpful.

Milestoneks, I'm very sensitive to smells so couldn't use the substances you mentioned. But I could use something like almond or cinnamon. Food for thought... no pun intended!

Fig, yup, I have a lot of books to do this to, so it's going to be a very slow process. Thanks for the link, which I'll check out. I have some plastic boxes here and will try the baking soda method.

Silverthwait, donating to women's prisons is a great idea. Years ago I did volunteer work at a minimum security women's prison about 45 minutes from here. I'll check to see if they're still operating and ask if they're interested. And I'll definitely check the contents first!

 

If it has not already been mentioned, homeless shelters are another good place to donate them to.