It’s a Book Drive!

Click here to donate your books

Did you know that most of our books were donated to us by the community? Over 95% of the books on our shelves were given to us by generous readers and community members. We wouldn’t be here without our donors, and we truly appreciate every one.

In the past we couldn’t offer any kind of store credit for book donations. We’re happy to announce that in 2024 we’ll be able to offer a small store credit to our donors!

How it works:

• If you’re donating more than about 200 books:
  • Use this form to arrange for a pick-up
• If you have fewer than about 200 books:
  • Drop them off during our regular store hours
  • Use our contact page to arrange an appointment to drop them off outside of our regular store hours
  • Use this form to arrange for a pick-up

What we want:

• Clean books – We’re happy to clean off light dust, stickers, etc. Please don’t bring any books with mold, heavy water stains, or heavy writing inside. Please ask before donating books from a smoking household.
• Condition – We prefer books in VG or better condition, but we can use some books in G to VG- condition. Please don’t bring us books with severe damage. Light scuffing, lightly creased spine, etc. are fine. But we can’t use books with deep tears to the covers or pages; broken spines (such that pages are falling out); or heavy soiling. We may make exceptions for severely damaged books with nice illustrations, but please ask first.
• Topics – We always need black studies, cultural studies, teen/YA fiction, and books on mysticism and alternative religions, and will offer double store credit for collections of books that are mostly made up of those categories. We can always use fiction of all kinds, including genre fiction, urban fiction, mystery/thriller, and romance. We do not accept books by right-wing authors, anti-LGBTQIA+, or anti-trans authors. We only accept select magazines. We’re currently very overstocked on the following sections: Christian studies, Judaica, military history, and oversized dictionaries and atlases. If that’s what you’d like to donate, you can still reach out; we may accept a few of those titles as part of a much larger collection, or as we need them.
• Discard policy – Most collections will have a few books we just can’t use. If we can’t use any of the books you bring us, you’ll be given the option to take them back or to leave them with us for disposal. If you leave them with us, it’s with the understanding that you won’t receive store credit for those titles, and that the books may be broken (torn apart and used for crafting); composted; recycled; or donated elsewhere. The discard option we choose depends upon several factors and may result in destruction of the book(s).

We’re sorry, but we can’t pay cash for books. We do offer store credit in exchange for books. The credit is a flat rate and is based on the number of books we can use, not on the specific value of any particular title.