Used Bookstore Sighting

[CaroPhoenix]

Mr. Rum, Child Rum, and myself went to a used bookstore that is one town over from where we live. (I had almost $80 in credit from there, and even with everything I bought, I've still got $27.99 cents left over in credit! )

Anyway, Child Rum had to go to the potty. Because they won't let customers take merchandise with them, I had to hand over the shopping basket with the books/Videoes to Mr. Rum and I had to run with Child Rum under my arm like a football (again! What is it with me and running with my poor child?). Hubs was looking at what I had picked up, and he was standing near the counter where people drop off the books/cds/dvds/videoes that they want to trade in for credit.

One woman was talking to one of the people behind the counter, and the subject of what do they do with the books that they reject (for whatever reason - they have too many of that book, it's not in good shape, etc.), and the person who originally brought them in doesn't want them back. The customer wanted to know if the bookstore donated the books.

The bookstore employee said that they didn't donate books, but instead they just threw the books away in the large dumpster behind the store. They don't like to donate the books as people will pick the books back up from wherever the books were donated and try to bring the book back to that store and try to get credit and they'd see the same book over and over again.

I hadn't heard it, Mr. Rum did. He took Child Rum out to the car (she was tired and acting up) and I went through my credit transaction, and waddled my way out to the car.

He didn't tell me the story until we were on our way home.

I just can't believe ... a used bookstore throwing books away? It just blows my mind ... I'm seriously thinking of using up my credit and going back to using the used bookstore that is in my town.

[BookstoreEscapee]

It is kind of sacrilegious, isn't it? I can kind of understand where they're coming from, though. If I were trying to sell stuff and they didn't take it, I'd take it back and donate it myself.

I remember when I first started at the bookstore and found about about stripped books. "They rip off the covers?! Seriously?! And just throw them out!!??" Then I discovered that we got to keep stripped books ... And when I took over the fiction section, and later new releases/frontlist, being able to strip stuff was a godsend.

[LibraryLady]

As a Librarian with over two decades of experience, I can say this.

Books are not like animals. The runt of the litter is well-worth saving. It's an individual creature with a right to life.

Books are mass produced things. They do not have the kind of life that an animal does.

I have thrown away books.

Sometimes I've done it because the books were compromised by bugs or water damage. Infected books can infect other books with insect infestation or mold. No library or used book store can afford to keep books like that. I may feel sad when I dump that book but we can always find other, clean copies of it.

Sometimes I have thrown away books because the binding was faulty. A $1.00 book of stories about Murder and Mystery in Maine sounds like a great bargain., It isn't when a signature is missing. That means you lose the end of a story that begins on page 36 and the beginning of a story that ends on page 64. I will not offer that book for sale. To do so would be a cheat.

There are many reasons why used book stores and libraries dump books. I wouldn't judge them too harshly for doing it.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Assuming they're telling the truth, I don't blame them.

I blame the sucky people who take the donated books and keep returning them to get more credit.

[Balgram]

It's a used bookstore, so the books they throw away have got to be in pretty bad shape, yes? It stinks to throw the books away, but it makes sense. I just wish they'd recycle, or something...wouldn't that be a great ton of paper to recycle?

The people who would dig into a dumpster and re-credit books are terrible. That's stealing, and stealing from a bookstore no less. Bleah, I say.

This next bit is off-topic. A friend of our family passed away and we sorted through her book collection in her house. Her book collection was beyond huge (easily a million books, every room was stacked floor to ceiling with unsorted books, and every room had at least 10 shelves on each wall packed with "sorted" books--her house was huge, too), and we unfortunately had to throw away nearly a fourth of the books due to water damage, insect damage, or rat attack. We rescued a great deal of the books (updating our library ten-fold) and donated about 25 boxes of books to the local library.

It was hard to throw away books, but it's better to discard the book than risk other people having to touch something so disgusting or have other books affected, just like LibraryLady said, though. We had to throw away some books that were out of print, and that nearly killed us. We only threw out those books if there was absolutely no hope of salvaging them.

[Sparky]

What kinds of books are we talking about here? Because if we're talking about Harlequin romances, I don't really care.

[wagegoth]

Our local store gives them to the library, which is just a couple of blocks away. The library either puts the books in their weekly sale or dumps them.

[Red_Dazes]

.... That makes me sad. I know sometimes a book just can't be saved, or is no longer worth saving... but DAMN...that makes me want to go dumpster diving for some books. I love having books. Even books I may never read, I just love having them around me.... I'm weird.

[Mark Healey]

American publishers put out 50000 new titles every year. Add the other English speaking countries and it is probably about 65000 (a lot of overlap). Then add all the other languages and you get an insane amount of new titles annually. Most of them are going to be crap. Of the ones that aren't crap a good portion of those will only be relevant for a limited time.

Throwing out the crap is good as is throwing out obsolete books.

[Anisotropy]

easy fix

There's actually a very easy fix to this problem. The book store can simply Mark the books in some manner, that they would give out, so that they know not to take them back as store credit. They can also Ban the people that try it .. a simple mark would be a Stamp of some sort.. or a simple colored mark somewhere.

[Ironclad Alibi]

Throwing out the crap is good as is throwing out obsolete books.

Hey! I love my obsolete books. Like An Introduction to Botany (1811) and Conversations on Vegetable Physiology (1836) with color illustrations. They are obsolete, but I just can't bring myself to throw them out.

[LibraryLady]

Hey! I love my obsolete books. Like An Introduction to Botany (1811) and Conversations on Vegetable Physiology (1836) with color illustrations. They are obsolete, but I just can't bring myself to throw them out.

OK. Those are one thing. They're worth saving, if only for the historical interest. The colored illustrations are just icing on the cake. However, things like the "biographies" of bands like New Kids on the Block or N Sync, are eminently disposable.

[Primer]

What we do every so often is fill up a flat-rate box and send it off to an APO in Iraq. DH has a cousin stationed on the front lines that makes sure stuff gets distributed, although he does read all the National Geographic magazines himself, first! What I have done in the past is sell back what I can, and use that money towards the postage. We just sent off over 20 pounds for under $10 today.

[lolad]

I got a few free books from a second hand book store that i repeatedly go to.

I was after some old hardcovers of a particular size so I asked if he had any that he couldn't sell but hadn't fallen apart yet either.

He gave me, on a later visit, some volumes from an incomplete encyclopedia he had awaiting being recycled.

The first one is in the middle of becoming a bookshelf right now.

My only problem now is deciding where to put them all once they're finished

[ShadedWings]

In the entertainment store, we also have a system to buy product from customers, thus Used!

This is what happens:

Customer comes in, attempts to sell us items (books, video games, movies, music). Often, a few items are rejected by the system or by us. We have too many, item's too old and no demand for it, random what-have-you reason from the corporate system setup, or if it's by us, the item's too damaged. Usually, about 90% of the time, we hand the item back to the customer, and explain why it's not taken at this time, and they say "oh well I'll give it to my sister's cousin's brother in law's son" or "I'll just put it in a garage sale" or "I'll see about this other store that might take it". No big deal.

However! There are people who go "well... I have no use for it! I don't want it, go ahead and keep it". At that point, we explain that policy demands we throw the item away, and that either a) changes their minds and they take it or b) they state they'll just throw it away themselves so less garbage for them.

Now, as far as our particular store, when the item is set aside to be trashed, we let the on-duty staff know that there's rejected items there if they want it, and about a third of the time the item (noooo not the books <3) gets taken home and either a) recycled b) donated to a library by staff or c) cherished. The rest of the time, it's thrown away unfortunately... especially if it was rejected due to extensive damage.

And this saga is fairly common as far as I know for stores that sell Used products. Hope that enlightened a few as to the "oh gods no, whyyyy" of the sad truth of throwing away books. I never do it myself, it makes me cringe!