Book Fairs

[floragord]

The books I donated to the charity shops in my local area were all good quality books in excellent condition and they certainly won't end up in recycling bins. It is only books in very poor condition and too tatty to be resold that end up being recycled and definitely not 'most' donated books.

Guess its just location/supply and demand, Eddie, its the norm here sadly because they just don't want to "waste" shelf space on books which apparently don't move anytime soon - it was a shock for us to hear this from the manager of a charity shop on Devonshire Road, as we thought the older population in Bexhill at least would snap them up...

[Eddie Muir]

I'm saddened to hear about the situation regarding donated books in Bexhill, Floragord, and hope this isn't the same in charity shops in other parts of the country. I'd hate to think that my donated books would end up in recycling bins. In view of your experience, I'll continue to be selective when it comes to parting with my books in future and I'll stick to the charity outlets I know to be 'trustworthy'.

[Courtenay]

I think that's awful too, Floragord — I can understand with books that are in poor condition, but if charity shops are throwing out perfectly good ones just because they think they can't sell them...

Apart from the brilliant charity bookshop I've mentioned occasionally in other threads, Egham (in Surrey, between Staines and Windsor) recenty had an interesting initiative set up by another charity in a vacant shop: a second-hand "book recycling" place where all the books were absolutely free. Shelves and shelves of them — you could just take whichever ones you wanted and anyone could donate books in return (though I expect they also threw out the really tatty ones). I have a feeling it's no longer there, though, as it obviously wasn't designed to make or raise any money.

[Poppy]

I think I've said before that I volunteer at a local charity shop for a few hours a week and lately we have been really struggling with the amount of books that have been getting donated! There are absolutely loads in storage upstairs and we have at least two shelf loads for sale downstairs at 3 for £1, so we're trying to sell them really cheaply. Although I also really regret throwing away any book whatsoever, I understand that our shop has to be ruthless, because we simply haven't got the space to be storing hundreds and hundreds of books, and if nobody is buying them, then they are taking up a lot of room that can be used for other things that would sell quickly and therefore, be bringing money to the charity.

Sadly, with my reasonable knowledge of books, I have the job of discarding books that I think won't sell, and I do feel bad about throwing away so many books. Sometimes we send them to a book shop who give the books away for free, but it obviously costs to transport them there, and it all comes out of the charity's funds, so more often than not, they get recycled.

I can see both sides, and in the position of someone who has donated the books, I would be unhappy if I knew that the books I had donated, had instead been recycled. But in the eyes of someone who has seen the enormous amount of books stored upstairs in the charity shop I volunteer at - I do understand why some books sadly have to be recycled.

[Katharine]

This is timely information for me, as my parents are sorting through the contents of my uncle's house. Some books, mostly 1970s paperbacks are in a pretty sorry state, and they probably would have recycled them anyway, but there are a number of hardback books dating from the early part of the last century which we assumed would get snapped up by someone. I'll warn my parents to check with whichever charity shop they were intending to send them to, to find out what kind of books they will sell, and if ours aren't suitable, we'll try somewhere else.

[Rob Houghton]

For seriously interesting/old/valuable books, it's worth trying a proper 'Oxfam Bookshop' or maybe just donate them to an antique bookshop rather than a charity shop. This way they're more likely to reach an appreciative audience. Failing that, maybe you could offer them for sale on eBay or a similar site.

[John Pickup]

This has intrigued me so this morning I asked a lady in our local Age UK what they did with donated books. She told me that they sorted out the ones they thought were collectable but most of them were recycled as they hadn't the room to store them. I suppose this is the case in most charity shops.

[Eddie Muir]

Fortunately we have a few charity shops in my area where most of the donated books are resold, John. They keep recycling to a minimum and discard only the tattiest books or those with questionable content.

[Courtenay]

I'm glad to know about this, really — I can't blame the charity shops that would otherwise be overloaded with books, really, but from now on I'm definitely making sure to donate any books I don't want to specialist charity bookshops or dealers. I've got a very good dealer just down the road from me in our village here; he will pay for good books and will say straight out if there are any he doesn't think he can sell. There's also an Oxfam bookshop in Sevenoaks, not very far away, so that's two places where I can be pretty sure any donated books will be safe. Thanks again to Floragord and others for letting us know about this — I don't think I would have thought of it otherwise.

[John Pickup]

The policy of charity shops near you, Eddie, appears to be to keep as many books as possible for re-sale. I did notice this morning that there wasn't much space for books in the Age UK shop. Perhaps I should offer my unwanted books to the trader who sells used paperbacks on our market once a week.

[Jack400]

I suppose this policy is possibly due to so many people selling on eBay anything that's 'worth anything' so the shops get huge quantities of tatty, out of favour and incomplete sets. At a time when many get their entertainment and information online or read books on Kindles or other e books. I'm actually glad to have seen this as I have been sorting books and felt it was quicker and easier to donate them than list and send them out. At least I can quiz the shop and see how many books they stock first. I know that my father attempted to sell books that he had been told were valuable by his mum. Only to discover a rather mouldy, musty smelling, jumble of mostly religious (deeply unfashionable apparently) mixed selection of incomplete sets that he eventually donated to Wimbledon library (after discussing it with them first). What they did next I will never know- but at least they were book lovers.

[Katharine]

I thought I was going to be attending my first book fair today. I picked up a flyer from a local book shop, and thought as it was Mother's Day weekend I'd treat myself.

Just as I was about to get ready to go, I thought I'd just check out the website to see if there was anything it would be handy to know before I went. Good thing I did - it's NEXT weekend

In my defence, there is one today, but that's at Long Melford which is a fair few miles from me, whereas the one next Sunday is at Woodbridge, just a 15 minute drive away.

[Courtenay]

Well, that was handy! Hope you do get to it next weekend and you enjoy it, Katharine.

[Fiona1986]

At least you didn't turn up to an empty field/hall and THEN discover the mistake!

[Francis]

I thought I was going to be attending my first book fair today. I picked up a flyer from a local book shop, and thought as it was Mother's Day weekend I'd treat myself.

Just as I was about to get ready to go, I thought I'd just check out the website to see if there was anything it would be handy to know before I went. Good thing I did - it's NEXT weekend

In my defence, there is one today, but that's at Long Melford which is a fair few miles from me, whereas the one next Sunday is at Woodbridge, just a 15 minute drive away.

Enjoy the fair, Katharine - we used to go to Woodbridge when our daughter lived in Ipswich and I remember it had antique and collector shops.