BS: Passing books along

Subject: BS: Passing books along
From: EBarnacle
Date: 10 Jul 18 - 01:15 PM

As always, Lady Hillary and I find ourselves with a surplus of books we have read. We haunt the freebie shelves at our local library and usually come away with one or two. I suspect that other 'Catters have the same problem. What I propose is that, as we complete reading one of these books, we list them s available to other 'Catters. Postage should be paid by the sender if it is within country. Foreign mailing gets expensive, so arrangements would have to be worked out. If there is enough interest, perhaps it can become a permathread or, like the declutter thread, just go on forever.

When a book is offered, the person who wants it can respond in the thread and send address by PM with the shipping address. First response gets it

Subject: RE: BS: Passing books along
From: Rapparee
Date: 10 Jul 18 - 08:35 PM

I have better than 2,200 of the things. The subjects tend to be, ah, esoteric.

Subject: RE: BS: Passing books along
From: robomatic
Date: 10 Jul 18 - 10:40 PM

Turns out around Anchorage there are lots of little outdoor cabinets mounted just off the sidewalks in residential neighborhoods where you can leave or take books. Now that the weather is warm I've seen canned goods and toiletry kits in some of them as well.

Subject: RE: BS: Passing books along
From: EBarnacle
Date: 10 Jul 18 - 11:06 PM

Ours include SF, history, fantasy, science, religion, yacht design, memoirs, etc. The shelves are double banked there is no place to sit. The beds and couches are surrounded.

Subject: RE: BS: Passing books along
From: mg
Date: 11 Jul 18 - 01:01 AM

i would leave a few at a time of the more general interest ones at the local laundromat..and take them back to free shelf at library. or sometimes they have spots for them in train stations etc.

Subject: RE: BS: Passing books along
From: EBarnacle
Date: 11 Jul 18 - 12:08 PM

My thought in starting this is to share with similarly interested 'Catters.

Subject: RE: BS: Passing books along
From: Raedwulf
Date: 11 Jul 18 - 12:14 PM

It's a lovely thought, EB! Kudos...

Subject: RE: BS: Passing books along
From: Joe Offer
Date: 11 Jul 18 - 12:46 PM

Robomatic, I think you're talking about https://littlefreelibrary.org/. Great idea, isn't it?

-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS: Passing books along
From: MikeL2
Date: 12 Jul 18 - 03:28 PM

Hi

I always used to be buying books and built up a stack very quickly. One day while we were in Town we looked in one of the many Charity shops,

They had loads of books ( mainly paperbacks. ) I was not aware of this and when asking questions found that pretty all Charity shops did this.

So I gathered up a load of my stock and took them to a well known Charity shop.

I was told that they have too many books and wouldn't take them. None of the Charity shop wanted them.

During this time I had an eye problem that would take months to fix,

They adjusted my specs and it helped but not much, A friend told me he had the same problem for which he was advised to try a Kindle. It worked a treat. I managed to get rid of my books as I found the Kindle so good. I found a number of friends who had Kindles and we used to meet regularly and we " borrowed" books from each other. One guy came and put 1000 yes 1ooo books of all kinds many of which are my favourites. So now I have very few paper backs and a huge library free gratis. I do buy an occasional Kindle book that takes my fancy.

Solved my problem I now only use Kindle books even though my eye-sight
is much better

cheers

MikeL2

Subject: RE: BS: Passing books along
From: wysiwyg
Date: 13 Jul 18 - 08:10 AM

EBarnacle, what a lovely idea.

Hardi and I had very good experiences in a similar vein; over the years quite a few old hymnals and used bindets have comé our way, while vinyl albums went to another Mudcatter.

For the vinyl we did form a backup plan. Just in case.

~S~

Subject: RE: BS: Passing books along
From: keberoxu
Date: 14 Jul 18 - 12:07 PM

There is a Little Free Library Mudcat thread someplace.

Subject: RE: BS: Passing books along
From: SPB-Cooperator
Date: 17 Jul 18 - 03:08 AM

I have already given away 2 or 3 copies of ragged Trousered Philanthropist, then bought another copy for myself.

Subject: RE: BS: Passing books along
From: keberoxu
Date: 31 Jul 18 - 02:27 PM

Wonder if this idea will take.
For me this is not the best moment to jump in,
but when the right moment does come,
knowing me, I will still have the books to get rid of.

Subject: RE: BS: Passing books along
From: Jack Campin
Date: 31 Jul 18 - 03:48 PM

In large cities there will always be charity shops that take books. I work for one and hauled about half a ton of them around today, including a few dozen Orientalist books around 100 years old which are worth significant money (like an early edition of Doughty's Arabia Deserta), and a bunch of Enid Blyton which is always saleable even if not for very much.

We have a van collection service, as do all the UK-wide charities - just phone up and ask. At bottom, even if nobody wants to read it, it's worth 5p/Kg for the paper.

Subject: RE: BS: Passing books along
From: Gurney
Date: 01 Aug 18 - 09:02 PM

I used to own a lot of paperbacks.
It's surprising how few people want them, secondhand.

The only author worth carrying to the post shop was Louis Lamour, I found. Those were popular even described as 'foxed and falling apart, but complete and readable.'

Subject: RE: BS: Passing books along
From: Thompson
Date: 02 Aug 18 - 04:18 AM

Careful giving books to certain UK charities. One of them is notorious for moving in near independent bookshops and undercutting them - many's the small bookshop that's been driven out of business by this particular charity.

Subject: RE: BS: Passing books along
From: Jack Campin
Date: 02 Aug 18 - 06:36 AM

Keeping a secondhand bookshop going is a marginal enterprise anyway. I doubt the charity bookshops affect them much. In Edinburgh one of the largest private second-hand bookshops is a couple of minutes walk from two specialist charity bookshops and about five charity shops with large book sections.

Drastic cost cutting by supermarkets and "airport" style book retailers is more damaging. But it only affects some kinds of book, things like paperback fiction and military potboilers. Many nonfiction genres are still reliable sellers, if the seller actually understands what they've got. (I've taken the trouble to learn what's what with books on religion, and I can sell a lot of them. Hardly any second-hand dealers bother).

Subject: RE: BS: Passing books along
From: Thompson
Date: 02 Aug 18 - 10:42 AM

From the Telegraph: Oxfam damages small independent bookshops, booksellers claim

"The charity, which is Europe's biggest retailer of second-hand books, sells donated stock and gets an 80 per cent reduction on business rates and largely employs volunteers.

"Independent booksellers say the dominance of the charity's 130 specialist book stores is forcing small bookshops to close."

Subject: RE: BS: Passing books along
From: keberoxu
Date: 02 Aug 18 - 04:15 PM

Most edifying, everybody, and now, getting back to the topic:

I have the first three books in the fantasy series,
The Wars of Light And Shadow, author Janny Wurts.
(She is wrapping up the final installment as we speak,
which is book no. eleven.)

The copies are hardcover, with dust jackets.
the titles are:
The Curse of the Mistwraith
The Ships of Merior
The Warhost at [of?] Vastmark

Subject: RE: BS: Passing books along
From: Jack Campin
Date: 03 Aug 18 - 10:11 AM

That sort of thing - 5000ish pages of plain text - is exactly what they invented e-readers for.

There are factors working against second-hand book retailing that are much more significant than charity shops:

- the abolition of the Net Book Agreement meant that the cheapest books could be sold REALLY cheap by retailers who could move them in truckloads - Tesco in particular. Charity shops now find it hard to get customers for cheap clothes, given how cheap Primark is: Tesco are the Primark of bookselling.

- electronic distribution has eaten into sales of the same cheap stuff. Second hand hardcopy romance is only saleable as pulp.

- at the high end, just about everybody with a first edition of "1984" now knows they can sell it themselves on EBay and get more for it than a second-hand dealer will offer. So the high end has gone too (and second-hand dealers can't moan about that in public as they can about Oxfam, since it might give people ideas)