How best to unload used books in Toronto

October 13, 2006 9:35 AM

What's the best way to divest yourself of a bunch of used books in Toronto?

My parents are preparing to "downsize" which means selling their house in Toronto. This means they won't have nearly as much space for their, oh say, 1000-ish books. No paticular rhyme or reason as to genre; there's fiction, non-, a fair bit of judaica, scientific textbooks.

I think they'd be just as happy to donate them as to make some money by selling them. Mainly they're looking for a way to get rid of a bunch of them with minimal effort... which suggests looking for a local solution. Any Toronto-centred ideas?

posted by PaulieK to travel & transportation (27 comments total)

Give them to a thrift store with a cause they support.
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 9:47 AM on October 13, 2006

Donate them to local libraries.
posted by SeizeTheDay at 10:25 AM on October 13, 2006

Libraries are uninterested in your books. (They buy new, add the plastic covers and barcodes, and are always trimming their older stuff for space reasons - they don't want your crap books gumming up the works.) Some libraries will *take* them, but they won't go out for circulation, they'll just be in the next library book sale (and then discarded if they don't sell). Most libraries won't take them at all.

Used book stores are very selective about what they buy.

I'm afraid the best way to get rid of them is to put them out on recycling day.
posted by jellicle at 10:44 AM on October 13, 2006

You could offer them on Freecycle - Toronto's community is quite active. Just offer people the chance to come and pick what they want in a couple of set times (like a garage sale without the selling), perhaps?
posted by jacquilynne at 11:03 AM on October 13, 2006

Small town libraries accept all kinds of books.
posted by StarForce5 at 11:06 AM on October 13, 2006

Catalogue them and put them in one big list on Craigslist, without descriptions or notes on condition. Sort roughly into fiction, non-fiction and childrens' books. Make it clear that you don't have time to answer questions on how clean the copy is.

Put up hardcovers for $5, trade paperbacks for $2 and mass market for $1. First come, first served.

Post this ad once a week for a month. You'll sell about 20% of your books.On average.

Then drop the prices. $2, $1 and $0.50. Post it once a week for a month. You'll sell another 20%. On average.

Recycle or Freecycle the rest.
posted by solid-one-love at 11:10 AM on October 13, 2006

U of T has giant book sales every so often. You might be able to donate the books to those? I'm not 100% sure. Yard sales might work. Craigslist as someone else has mentioned. I would think you can donate to a local library as well if they aren't super beat up.
posted by chunking express at 11:21 AM on October 13, 2006

Sell them on Amazon. I made $5000 this year from selling a few boxes of books. The Judaica especially will go quickly for good money.

Fiction, not so much.
posted by Invoke at 11:41 AM on October 13, 2006

I sell books on Amazon and eBay. I have alot of fun doing it, but it certainly doesn't qualify as "minimal effort" by a long shot, and 5000 books will take a long time.

Also, here in Canada, we don't have the media mail (book rate) service that the US postal service has. This makes selling almost any used book by mail not feasible, unless it's a rare collectible (e.g. it'll cost you about $6-7 to mail a book within Toronto and about $12-15 to mail it to Vancouver -- if it's still available)

Absolute minimal effort: Bring them all to a thrift store. Doesn't make much difference which one, other than which cause you want to support.

Minimal effort with making some money: You can take them to a used book store or a rare book dealer but they will take a small fraction of what you have. Then maybe you can get rid of some more at a yard sale. Bring the rest to a thrift store.

The key to keeping it low-effort is to avoid selling (or otherwise disposing of) them one-by-one. Stick to ways that you can get rid of a bunch at the same time.
posted by winston at 11:55 AM on October 13, 2006

oops, make that "1000 books"
posted by winston at 11:56 AM on October 13, 2006

oops again. "if it's still available" should have been "if the book is still available in bookstores, your customers would probably be better off buying a new copy"
posted by winston at 11:57 AM on October 13, 2006

Minimal effort with making some money: You can take them to a used book store

Depending on the store, they might take all the books and pay you for some, especially if they're already catalogued. My parents gave about 700 books to a local book store, which probably junked most of them, but the hardest part was packign all the books into a truck.
posted by muddgirl at 12:04 PM on October 13, 2006

(they got about 200 bucks in store credit, which they have yet to use up).
posted by muddgirl at 12:04 PM on October 13, 2006

Toronto MeFi Book Swap???
posted by dripdripdrop at 12:13 PM on October 13, 2006

Yardsale --> Books piled on table(s) in driveway, signs posted: "Hundreds of free books!"

Little old ladies with wheelbarrows will cart every one of them off.
posted by empyrean at 12:49 PM on October 13, 2006

BookCrossing.com
Not really serious cause it would take a lot of effort to register them, but it'd be a lot of fun planting 1000 books.
posted by Durin's Bane at 1:39 PM on October 13, 2006

You might want to sort through any of the larger, fancier, more unusual looking books and google them to see if you have any rarities, I was going to sell some of my parents garden books and found a pair that are worth $600 for the set.
posted by Iron Rat at 4:17 PM on October 13, 2006

matches, my friend. matches will be fastest.
posted by allkindsoftime at 6:22 PM on October 13, 2006

www.bookmooch.com
posted by mulkey at 7:20 PM on October 13, 2006

Bookcrossing would be a lot of fun too. I'll bet we could get a group of bookcrossers together to register and release them all.
posted by winston at 7:47 PM on October 13, 2006

In major cities multiple bookdealers exist and for such a large collection some of them will be willing to come and look through the books. They will likely only purchase the best volumes and the rest will have to be lugged by you to a bookstore or thrift-shop donation site.
posted by digitalis at 1:09 AM on October 14, 2006

If you do want to drop some at libraries, I would suggest Toronto Reference Library on the east side of Yonge north of Bloor. There is a drop box just inside the security gate soliciting donations.

At many smaller branches in the Toronto Public Library system, the hassle of taking your donations may outweight any benefit for the staff there.

It is true that they will likely not keep any (or at least, not many) of your books. However, there are ongoing book sales that are a helpful source of revenue for the library.
posted by onshi at 9:00 AM on October 14, 2006

If you drop all or a good number of those books off at your local Goodwill or Salvation Army, you might try asking for a tax receipt.
posted by orange swan at 4:59 PM on October 14, 2006

If you want to get rid of them for minimal hassle and expense, I might be prepared to make an offer on the whole lot. E-mail me at [e-mail] if you're interested and we can discuss.
posted by Jaybo at 9:34 PM on October 14, 2006

In Toronto there's a fantastic used academic book store that might take scholarly Judaica or scientific texts. Atticus Books. Certainly give them a call before junking the books, if you think you might have anything they would take. They may be able to point you to the best places to donate the rest.
posted by LobsterMitten at 10:13 PM on October 15, 2006

Amazon marketplace is a fantastic place to get a few dollars for your books. In the mean-time put them in crates (You can get them for $6 to $9 at Staples), or even those milk crates (but they will want them back *wink*) in a local storage. Just put them in there A-Z by Author so it's easy to pick them up when someone orders them.
posted by iheartcanada at 3:27 PM on July 6, 2007

Not sure if anybody will notice this but since I've had three people contact me in very short order recently (back to school cleaning? I have no idea...), I wanted to add a note that my offer a couple posts up no longer stands as I'm no longer in Ontario.

Thanks,

Jason
posted by Jaybo at 11:25 PM on September 14, 2007