Book Sale Strategies

At a Friends of the Library sale it can get quite overwhelming.

Be informed before you go.

If it is a large sale it will be tempting to grab books and throw them in your bag. We have learned with experience to be a little more discerning (even if you are going to look them over later). Do your homework and know which books sell best.

We usually will plan a strategy of who goes where. My boys know the boys’ series titles that do well, so they’ll head to children’s chapter books or young adults. My hubby knows cookbooks well so he’ll head there. He’ll head over to the specially priced books and do a quick scan since most of the time they are overpriced or really not worth their asking prices. The FOL volunteers usually use Abe’s high end prices to justify a title’s worth. Then my dh will head over to the non fiction money or business and look for real estate and stock market courses. My daughter knows designing books and some non fiction so she’ll head there. I go to the children’s picture books. Then they will loop back around and help me go through every box, one book at a time, on the children’s tables since that is our selling niche. We do a quick scan and grab titles that we know, and then we go through individually.

If you are going on the pre-view night then you will want to arrive early to be near the head of the line. Take along totes with wheels, if at all possible, or be sure to have outer garments to toss over your book bags/boxes if you place them in a corner to hold. Not every FOL sale will allow folks to pick their books up and sort later to decide to buy, but most do. We usually park an older child near our boxes since some folks get mixed up and end up rifling through your finds. (Not sure they are mixed up when you have your personal belongings covering them.) Some people have bags or boxes that say “sold” on them so others will know they are not just sitting there to be gone through. When you sort try to go to a out of the way corner (not always possible) smell and flip throug gh all the pages. I can’t tell you how many times we have forgotten to thumb through the books and brought home broken and/or torn paged books.

Julie Anna

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