What to do with books you won’t read again

We read a lot (as you can tell from this blog. We are changing the book reviews so you won’t have them all the time! I promise) and we have accumulated more books than we will want to have to haul around the rest of our lives. So we have to do something with them.

This post will deal with hard copy books, not kindle (for a different post).

book

First – evaluate whether you will ever read them again or recommend them to a friend.

Second – if they don’t pass the test, get rid of them (at least making room for better books). Here are some ideas to do that.

  1. Don’t buy them in the first place unless you know you will want to keep it! Its called a library.
  2. Sell them on amazon.com 
    • Make sure you can sell for over $3 otherwise you are paying to give away a book. Not fun.
  3. Trade them on paperbackswap.com
    • This is a great website that is free. Basically you set up a virtual bookshelf of books you don’t want and one with books you do want. When someone wants one of your books, you mail it to them (yes, you pay the $2.53 for postage). Then you receive one book credit which allows you to request one book from someone else.
    • An audio book costs two credits, so we have been trading two books we don’t want for one audio book we do want.
  4. Give them away to friends
    • You may not want to hold on to it, but you know someone who could benefit from it. Give it away. Just don’t give away trash books.
  5. Sell them at Half Priced books
    • We put this after giving away because you get very little for them. If it can be a help, it is better to give it away then get $.25 for it.
  6. Tear them up for exercise
    • Chances are if you are a big reader, you need some more physical exercise. Here is a great way to do it!
  7. Give them to a child to color in
    • We are not responsible for any collateral damage caused by the child getting into the habit of coloring in “big people” books.

Leave a comment and tell us what you do with extra books.