[Michlib-l] better world books follow up

[Stacy Pasche]

For those of you wanting to hear responses from my inquiry about Better
World Books, here they are.  Thanks everyone!  Good feedback.

"We have had a BWB drop box in our lot since mid-June. Our patrons seem to
like it, staff has less donations to sort through and we don’t have to
wonder how we will dispose of surplus donations. We also like that nothing
goes to a landfill, we can choose the literacy charity which benefits from
our participation and we just received a check for $103 for the first three
months. Our annual book sales have barely been yielding $200 so we are
satisfied. We will also be adding a link to their website for selling and
we will get a small percentage of the sales and can use it ourselves to buy
retrospective replacements, etc.  Let me know if you have further
questions."


"We have had good luck with Better World Books.  So far we have only sent
them 40 boxes of books that were withdrawn from our collection that didn't
sell in our book sale and we have made about $100 in 2 months.  These were
books that we would have had to recycle or give to Salvation Army so for us
it was a success.  They are very easy to work with and they send provide
the boxes.  UPS is their shipper and they will pick up the boxes the next
day so you don't have boxes of books waiting around.  I highly recommend
Better World Books, but I haven't used them for old or rare books."




"We really like working with BetterWorldBooks – have been since 2007.  The
return on sales isn’t that great, but they provide the boxes and pay for
the shipping so with minimal effort we are able to move old books out, and
make a bit of money in the process. They recently stopped mandating the
pre-screening process, and they will now take (almost) any books.  We still
pre-screen (using a volunteer), only because they have been so good to us
and we can now use ROSIE to dispose of absolutely almost every type  of
media (and at no cost to us, as well).  BWB also sells used books and we on
occasion find books we need to buy from them.  They are a great non-profit
to work with; a percentage of sales from your books goes to support other
non-profit literacy groups (you can choose which one).  Customer service is
great.   I’ve not done a lot with their ARC (antiquarian, rare &
collectible books) section – so don’t know if that still requires
pre-screening or not.  We get a check from them three times a year, and so
far in 2013, we’ve received just over  $100.00 from them.    Our
partnership with them has worked out great."



"I have used BWB for some rare and not so rare books for a while. The
return you get from them depends on what they can sell them for so its a
little hard to say what you might get for your books. I have gotten checks
from them that have ranged from about $50 to $400. The fact that they pay
shipping cost for whatever you send is nice (although they do have a
minimum number of boxes that you need to send at one time-and they do
provide that boxes as well). I also post our weeded books up on an ebay
site that I maintain. Its a lot of work and it might be more profitable,
but BWB will be a lot easier if you don't have someone who can deal with
all the issues that comes with selling thru ebay. Amazon does not work if
it does not have an ISBN number, so it is not an option. I have also worked
with a used book dealer, but I think we had a special case where he drove
all the way in from Boston to see what we had. Would not recommend John
King in Detroit-not likely to get much of anything from him.
What you might want to do is check out Addall used book site
http://used.addall.com/ to see if the books you have are really worth
something. The prices listed tend to be higher than what you might really
get (most of the time what I get from an ebay posting is nothing like what
they list), but it will at least give you an idea if what you have is
really rare.  My experience for what its worth."



"We have used BWB once to date. We did not send any rare books – we sent
items that did not sell in our annual book sale. Our friends boxed them up
after the sale. We had them picked up by BWB, a total of 40 boxes of books
were initially sent. We were not very selective on what we sent. These were
the books that are left over from the sale, we already selected some to go
to the jail. We also pick out books to give to our local food pantry – so
kids/adults that are there can select a book or two to take home for free.
The boxes were shipped out a few months ago and to date, we have received
$60.00. It was a lot of work for $60 (we could still receive a bit more…),
but it is better than putting them in the recycle bin."
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