Public Libraries Trading Quaintness For Cash

theodp writes "To help nourish lean budgets, public libraries are increasingly eyeing the e-commerce used-book market as an alternative to the long-standing community tradition of the local book sale. Abebooks reports a tenfold surge in public library clients over the last three years. The payoff can be handsome. One library group boasts of getting $250 for a few boxes of 'miserable, horrible stuff' and another $110 from a World War II vet for a book about his Army regiment. A public library in Texas auctioned 300 items on eBay to help plug a budget hole. And a Seattle suburb moved its annual library sale of some 80,000 books to Amazon, citing expediency and extra cash as motivators."

Comments

Even Goodwill is starting to do this

[CatGrep]

Our local GoodWill has two 'outlet' stores.
Basically these are large warehouses where the stuff that didn't sell at the regular GoodWill store ends up in large bins and is sold by the pound. We call it simply 'The Bins' and it has spawned an interesting sub-culture of it's own.

It's a great place to go look for books (books are seperated and put in their own bins so you don't have to claw though clothes to find them) and lots of eBay/half.com sellers go there to buy books for 25 cents each (50cents for hardbacks). When new book bins come out it's a frenzy of books flying as the book sellers elbow each other for position. How do I know? I visited the book bins last August and September to make money to live on.

Now, GoodWill has gotten wise and they pre-screen the books that go into the bins for sale on various online outlets, so it's not quite as lucrative visiting the bins anymore.