Five ways to approach downsizing a book collection

When Book Driver started its Chicago book donation program, it was something of an afterthought. While we knew there were a lot of used books available in the market, like most people, we didn’t give it much thought beyond that. People didn’t know what to do with the books, so they just gave them to us. 

That was until we started working with people and realized that it could become quite an emotional journey for book lovers to pick and choose which books to keep and which to let go. 

Here are the five ways we advise people to approach this task. 

1. Plan to make three passes through your collection. This is based on working with over 1000 people and organizations. This will give you time to remove books you’re sure about while creating mental room for other books you’re not.
2. Think about the space certain books take up. Hardcovers and coffee table books take up more room than paperbacks so being choosy with bigger books might mean removing fewer books from your collection overall if that is your goal. 
3. Books degrade in storage both in terms of physical condition and intellectual value. We can not overstate this. This makes it harder to get rid of them in the long-run.
4. Be open to who wants them, not where you think they should go. This will help the maximum amount of books avoid a landfill. By this I mean that the books might be used by a myriad of organizations or individuals. In our experience most books will find a new owner but it’s probably not going to be your children, your local library or your former graduate school. 
5. Some may have value but expect pennies on the dollar. Powell’s, Half Price Books, Myopic and Ravenswood Books are just a few places in the city and suburbs that offer cash and/or credit for your books. And as you will probably buy more books down the line, a little credit at these places never hurt anyone.

Books are special. Know that you are not alone if it ends up being more difficult than you thought to give them up. That’s been surprising to us, and heartening. While we will toss old linens, clothes, furniture or paper products quite easily, there is something about books that people find hard to just throw away.

Of course if you need help we offer a free pickup of books (and other media related items like vinyl, DVDs and games).  Check out our Chicago page.  

Bookseller: “Honestly some of these will end up in the trash.”

People react with dismay. How sad, right?

But booksellers know that many books are thrown out every day, from libraries and schools especially, and that donated books are often in bad enough shape to be targeted for recycling.

So why does everyone keep giving me funny looks when I’m just tryin’ ta burn some old books?

“This has nothing to do with censorship!”—always my point numero uno.

Books are sacred to book lovers, but to booksellers, not so much. Matt is fond of pointing out you can be a better seller if you have no preconceived notions of a book’s worth.

You find out pretty soon what a book’s worth is in the market. And the sheer amount of crap you see—now I’m talking trendy pop culture and political books, mainly—quickly lowers the bar for how bad off that copy of Eat, Pray, Love has to be for it to burn.

The typical fodder is old but not too old, disintegrating, smelly dictionaries, cookbooks, children’s board books, books stored in damp garages, and digests, books of the year.

But here’s a secret: everyone likes it better when you burn books they hated in school. There’s a gut reaction to crappy English grammar schoolbooks, for example, not old enough to be rare, watching it burn on the fire with evil glee.

Matt: “Ivanhoe. Company policy to burn it every time we get it. Had to read it. Really horrible.”

It’s sort of a fun party game in which often, one or more books are rescued from the fire and read a little bit of, at least. One person took a book on music ensembles before I could pitch it in the fire.

“It burns like logs,” my friend said. It was true, the big hardcover, an encyclopedia maybe, would burn steady for 30 minutes. The pages made a heavy fan like cinder pile which when you spread it revealed pages you could read as they burned.

But books are sacred! Some books will always be bought and sold, kept in libraries, kept cherished on bookshelves. I keep about 5 out of every big donation for my own library.

But lets not pretend that’s the fate of all books.

Books are sacred. But books are also paper.

Reasons we support burning the occasional book.

1. past due condition

2. trendiness / overprinted

3. novelty-stupidity / not a proven seller over time

If a book has two or more of the above features, it’s burnable. For e.g. a crappy marked up copy of Twilight. That hits all three.

4. content issues

This is emphatically NOT about burning books whose ideas we don’t like. That would be infantile, authoritative jackbooting. The main reason we support limited burning of paper materials including books (if you’re having a fire anyway, you know) is the fact that the millions of books that are tossed out each week are not recycled.

Party Down: Navigating the Summer Social Scene Together

By Emily Johnson

A friend is in a six-month burgeoning relationship. She’s very independent, down-to-earth, and dating a sweet guy. He wants to spend all his time with her. For her part she’s trying to establish some boundaries.

They were going to a party one night and she was a bit dreading it. “I want to be free to have a good time, and not have to worry about him,” she continued. “I like to be able to do my own thing,” she said, “you know?”

“But sometimes I just get defensive and mean,” she said and then laughed. “It makes him keener, if anything!”

Separate Lives

I remembered instantly what it was like to negotiate a party with my ex, and finding it an unexpected minefield. “Festivals are for old friends and new lovers,” someone told me at a festival after he’d lost me (on purpose).

Now, listening to my friend on the other side of this equation I understood better my ex’s need to exert independence, even though he was being a jerk, and my counterproductive neediness in response.

As I relax through the long weekend of Memorial Day I’m happy to be going into summer sans partner.

Read more in the July 2016 issue of Industry Magazine.

Sticking Together

I was bartending at an after party for a play, and one of the actors was very young, obviously fresh to the scene, and excited. A few times he came over to shyly ask for wine. He checked in with his girlfriend, was very attentive, even as he had attention from all corners.

As the crowd thinned and the wine bottles emptied, he came over once more for a last cup. The girlfriend stopped him, saying, “Do you really wanna do that?”

He hung his head a bit, and she backed off right away. “Well it’s your night you do what you want.”

Couples, man.

I watched idly this little scene, he was overacting on stage but very real right now.

Off to the side the main actor, a studly Irish gent of middle age, stood with an older woman,  a member of the board. She’s impeccably turned out–I want her patent leather shoes–and she takes a gentle but firm hold of his arm as she leans in to whisper to him.

All 6’2 of him laughs and leans in and out. This one was better on stage, maybe too good off.

The house managers, suddenly off duty, invited me to scour the BBQ leftovers and to give them a beer. We chatted and bided our time til the hall was empty, or empty enough to gently nudge the remainders.

 

 

 

 

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