I recycle my un-saleable books at our local recycling center, still affectionately known to locals as The Dump. One time I was there throwing out boxes of old, ratty, mass market paperbacks, heaving them into the paper recycling bin. An older lady waited until I had finished my chore, then proceeded to climb right into the bin and start to heave most of them back out. I asked her what she thought she was doing. She said she was getting them for one of the local non-profits who had a free book-exchange shelf. I knew darn well that I would end up rejecting those books all over again from hopeful sellers. At one point I even started tearing them up to discourage the dump-picking. Looking back, I don’t know who was crazier, her for picking books out of a dumpster, or me for being so anal about keeping those books from coming back to my store.

Another time I got a call from a guy who swore he had a van full of nothing but ‘primo’ books in great condition – very valuable. He said he needed money to pay his bills.

After an hour’s drive, this guy wheeled into the parking lot in a van so loaded the bumper scraped the road when he made the turn. He had over forty cartons of books, which he proceeded to unload onto the front porch. It took me over four hours to sort through the stuff, hoping in vain to find something decent, but most of the boxes were full of damp, mildewed books, mouse droppings, mold and dirt. I bought about thirty books and that only because I felt sorry for him. He was trying to sell stuff out of those boxes to my customers for several hours before I made him load up and leave. Another lesson learned.

As an aside to this story, I have found through much experience that people who bring books in using big old trash bags are usually bringing just that – trash. I have found that the time and labor involved in going through the bags is usually not worth it. However, neatly packed and stacked books in shopping bagss are usually much better. But the best thing I love to see coming into my store are nice clean books in clean, neatly packed boxes.