In March of 2019 Tom started becoming passionate about buying and selling books. He’s always loved books. The highlight of his week, as a young boy, was the day the bookmobile showed up and he’d walk home with a stack of books so high, he couldn’t see over them as he was carrying them home. (this sounds kind of “campy”….but it’s true…he was restricted to his yard for the whole summer “except” for going to the bookmobile!)
The thing that cemented him to his recent decision to get involved as a book seller was seeing a whole truck load of books being dumped at the county landfill. Such a waste! To see these books just being dumped…kind of broke his heart…..there had to be a way to get at least some of these books into peoples hands. So, he started searching for unused/discarded books and selling them online. Tom has now developed multiple relationships, with people and businesses, that have created outlets to keep books from being destroyed or carelessly tossed into landfills.
Books are heavy, can take up a lot of space and are not a high profit item for most of the people Tom works with. Books are not a good fit for some of their business models. Some of Tom’s sources just have more books than they can handle….so….where do you think these end up?….Yep! In a landfill or to a donation center. Donation centers sell what they can and then some of them pass excess books on to other centers. Eventually a good majority of them end up in an unusable place….they can only be passed around so much. This is where we come in.
The sources Tom has cultivated vary greatly, from thrift stores, storage unit purchasers, house flippers, house clean-out companies and individuals. Our services help create a more sustainable and environmentally conscious method of handling these unwanted items by using our services.
But…it’s not just about selling books.
Tom is working with an elementary school librarian allowing her to go through the books we receive, select out children’s books and put them in her library…for FREE. She is ecstatic about it! These books are either given to the children to take home or they are priced at 25 cents or lower, and then sold to help fund new purchases for the library. This Librarian is also supplying 6 different preschool teachers out of the books she’s gleaning. She’s helping them receive books from us through her program. They have begun to build their own small classroom libraries. Which most importantly is… getting books into children’s hands! It’s a win-win situation that so many can benefit from. All of these books would have otherwise been destroyed.
Currently our facility is too small to allow a mass of teachers to “rummage” through the books but…the dream/goal is that next year we will have purchased a building large enough not only to process all that we bring in/ship out, but to also become a place where we can put books out on display to allow teachers accessiblity to books for their students. Again…these are books that have been deemed as no “monetary” value. Well, we believe there is more to value in life than money!
Also in the future, as we grow, We’re hoping to become a resource to help youth organizations such as Girl scouts, Boy scouts, Campfire, churches, civic groups, etc… with fundraising book drives.
HOW WE OPERATE THE BUSINESS SIDE OF THINGS…
We pay 6 cents a pound for books that are shelf pulls. These are the books that have been”picked through” on store shelves and are now being rotated out of stock.
We also pay 8 cents a pound for raw books. These are the ones that are donated but not sorted through. These are just boxed up and put in a pile for me to pick up.
Media goes for 8 cents a pound when separated from the books. If they are just piled in with the books, it’ll be priced at the 6 cent mark.
We bring a scale with us that tops out at 75lbs but do not want to haul a box of books over 50lbs. A box that is 14″ X 14″ x 14″ is approximately 50lbs (+/-) we prefer that one of the facilities personnel weigh the books together with our team member to minimize any potential mistakes. However, most of the relationships we deal with trust our accuracy.
We can be fairly flexible when it comes to scheduling a book pickup…however, we do want to make sure that there are enough books to make it worth our time and the cost of Fuel. We realize that each facility has differing volume levels of book donations so we’re willing to be flexible and help coordinate a pick-up plan.
ITEMS WE ARE UNABLE TO TAKE…
Unfortunately, at this time, we are unable to accept magazines, VHS, vinyl albums, cassette tapes or 8 tracks .
