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Wait! Don't Burn that Book, Donate It - By Karen Wright These camels will walk many miles to bring books to rural villages. By Karen Wright The words "burning books" (even if they are bad books and might deserve it) bring chills to my spine; shades of Fahrenheit 451, the bookseller's nightmare! I won't pretend that there aren't books that I have wanted to burn in my lifetime as a bookseller, whether because they were really bad books or because they had been on my shelves way too long. But, I was somewhat distressed by the article last month on the dealer who was burning excess books. I understand why he felt he had to do it, but I think there are other options. As a book dealer myself, with tons of books that I would love to see go away, I thought maybe I should do a bit of research on places we booksellers could donate our excess books. As it turns out, there are many, many great organizations in place, here and overseas, that want a lot of our old books. I'll tell you about a few of them. A couple of years ago, after our trip to Costa Rica, I sent three boxes of books to a lending library in San Jose, C.R. They appreciated them greatly and the postage was not too bad. However, with the ludicrous new overseas postage costs that just went into effect, we would need to take into consideration whether an organization will pay for all or part of the postage or not. Here are a few of the places I located. From my viewpoint, though I am a small, not terribly profitable bookstore, if I have to pay some postage to give some of these good, but unsaleable books to people who really, really need them, I will pay the postage and call it a donation for my taxes. Let's start with Books for Soldiers, since we are talking about the men and women who are laying their lives on the line every day in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other parts of the world. Whether or not you agree with the war, it is nice to know that you can do something for those brave folks. I emailed the organization and got a letter back immediately. "I'm one of the moderators at Books for Soldiers. We're so glad you've found us!" They offer a couple of ways to become involved. One choice is to invite booksellers to join them at Books for Soldiers. It's a free, but somewhat time consuming, process. First, you would have to get an account with www.booksforsoliders.com. Then, you send in a notarized application. After the application has been processed (2-4 weeks), you will become "Official Volunteers" and have access to a variety of troop addresses.
Wait! Don't Burn that Book, Donate It - By Karen Wright none This is such typical, annoying, bureaucratic, government red tape that it makes me want to scream, but probably a very worthwhile place to send your excess books, and I think, but am not sure, they pay postage, or the recipient does. This group also has another option. One can register on their site, and then offer books in their "We Have Books" forum. These books have to be listed by title. Then military personnel who come to their website can view the titles and send their requests and addresses directly to the bookseller. For more info on these folks, go to their website, booksforsoldiers.com. Many libraries will still accept books. They are really picky about what books they take and often they will put donated books in their Friends of the Library sales. But, what the heck, it is better than tossing them in the land fill or burning them. Give your local library a call and find out what their needs are and what they will and won't accept. It goes without saying that they probably want clean books with no tears, stains, ex-lib marks, or pages missing, but most of us have those kinds of books anyway. You can find more on library donations at www.adoptalibrary.org. Another excellent place to send your books is to American Indian Reservations. According to their website; "Statistics show that, over the course of an entire year, over 90% of tenth graders in reservation schools did not read a single book outside of the classroom." If you can send a book that jump-starts one kid into becoming a reader, then go for it. Many reservations accept donations of used books for their local reservation libraries. For further information and donation requirements, please contact the reservation of your choice. For a list of those, go to www.ncai.org/Tribal_Directory.3.0.html. They have a link on that website to a list of Native American K-12 schools. I found two organizations that encourage you to send books to prisons, and there were more, I'm sure. The Prisoners' Reading Encouragement Project serves as a support organization to prison libraries and educational programs. They have donated more than 40,000 books to 23 New York State prisons. They support libraries and educational programs at ten New York State facilities. New and gently used books, audiotapes and videos are most often requested by their librarians and program counselors. In general, they cannot use books that are more than ten years old. Some prisons won't accept books from any place but a bookstore or an organization such as this one. For more information about donations contact Annette Johnson at Prisoners Reading Encouragement Project at info@prisonreader.org.
Wait! Don't Burn that Book, Donate It - By Karen Wright none The Bookman.org in San Diego, California, has donated over one million books to local jails, provides books to homeless centers, senior centers, and teachers, and has given books to the needy in 37 foreign countries. For more information, visit www.TheBookman.org website. Many states have some sort of organization that collects books for prisoners, homeless shelters, and so on, so call around a bit and try to find those orphan books a home. There are a number of groups that send books to foreign countries where they don't have books to throw away, as we do, but need them desperately. Bridge to Asia supplies books, journals, databases, and other educational materials that are essential to teaching and research but too costly for most developing countries to afford. They have sent about 6 million books to more than 1,000 schools in China in the past 16 years. Their Ministry of Education pays for book-shipping, various institutions donate staff and offices, and dozens of university librarians and support staff give their time to sort and distribute books to more than 600 universities in China. See them at www.bridge.org. Here is my favorite! If I knew one of my books was being toted across the desert on a camel or a donkey, I would be jazzed. The Donkey Library is in Zimbabwe, the Camel Library operates from Kenya near the unstable border with Somalia. They started out in 1996 with three camels, taking books to the poorest and least educated of the poor, and now have 12 camels that travel to four settlements per day, four days per week. The camels and the librarian who rides them, bring the books to barefoot village schools, adults and children, sometimes laying the books out under a big tree, so the villagers can take their pick. They get to keep these precious books for two weeks. But the climate and moving is hard on the books and they need more books all the time. Children's storybooks in English and Swahili are the most popular, followed by general fiction and nonfiction for children and adults. The Book Aid International staff sorts and selects books and journals and packs cases of books ready for shipment to Kenya. BAI pays for all transport and freight of books from London to Nairobi Inland Container Depot or www.bookaid.org. You might want to find out about shipping from the U.S. You gotta see it to believe it so go to their website.
Wait! Don't Burn that Book, Donate It - By Karen Wright none If you are on the west coast of the U.S., the Global Book Exchange in Novato, CA, collects and distributes donations of used texts and library books, but I'm sure they'd be delighted to have any good books. Their mission is to promote education and literacy worldwide. You can Go to their website at www.globalbookexchange.com or call Marilyn Nemzer at (415) 883-2665. Rotary Club International also implements book projects in developing countries. In other countries that have indigenous Rotary Clubs and Rotary International will match funds for shipping. You can either call your local Rotary Club or call Rotary International (847) 866-3000. The Brother's Brother Foundation distributes donated medical, educational, agricultural, and humanitarian response resources to people in need of them internationally. They have specific book donation programs such as Books Across the Sea, Jamaica Book Program, and Ghana Book Program. Give them a call at (412) 321-3160 or email at mail@brothersborother.org. If that is not enough, try the non-profit, Books for the Barrios, which is dedicated to strengthening elementary school education in the Philippines. You can call them at (925) 687-7701 or email them at frantzic@usna.edu. Then there is the American Chemical Society's Project Bookshare that collects chemistry textbooks and back numbers of journals from donors and makes these materials available to libraries in selected small U.S. colleges and to university libraries in mostly developing countries. These are books that are hard for us booksellers to get rid of, but when donated, they help improve the educations of chemists and chemical engineers in Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America. For more information, visit the Project Bookshare website. I would also call your local school district office and ask them if there are any schools in your area that need books. Not just kiddie books, but also technical schools, community colleges, Magnet schools, and universities. I have teacher friends whose school districts are so poor that the teachers use some their own meager salaries to buy books for their kids. Check that out before you give up.
Wait! Don't Burn that Book, Donate It - By Karen Wright none So, okay, you've tried one or all of these organizations, your thrift store locks the doors when it sees you coming, your local librarian runs screaming when she sees you with that box of useless books, and you still have books that need to go bye bye. Here are a couple of last resorts. They say on their website, Earth's 911: "If donation options are not available or your books are not usable, please consider recycling used books. Earth's 911 may help identify a local recycler for used books in your area. For recycling, pollution prevention, and other environmental information in the United States, Earth's 911 provides a comprehensive database of local recycling programs by ZIP code. For more information, visit the Earth's 911 website or call 1-800-CLEANUP." And the last interesting organization that I found, though there are many more out there, is www.bookrecycler.org. You need to belong to or be a part of a nonprofit organization to use this and no, just because your bookstore is not profitable that does not make you a nonprofit organization! This is a way for non-profit organizations to sell books. The bookrecycler.org system finds books in your inventory for which they already have a buyer waiting. They say that; "When a desired book is located in your inventory, you are given a price quote representing a resale value of that book. The price quote is the amount a buyer has already committed to pay for that particular book. In many cases, the price quote is much more than the amount the book would be priced for sale in a public sale. You have the option to send the book to bookrecycler.org for immediate sale, or to leave it in your inventory for sale at the nonprofit bookstore or in a public sale. Again, the advantage of using bookrecycler.org is immediate sale, 24/7, at a higher resale price." I guess my point is that though we are all drowning in old books we cannot sell in our stores or online, there are lots of ways to see those books into the hands of people who want, need them, and would love them; they deserve the chance to give them a home.

Wait! Don't Burn that Book, Donate It

- By Karen Wright

These camels will walk many miles to bring books to rural villages.

By Karen Wright

The words "burning books" (even if they are bad books and might deserve it) bring chills to my spine; shades of Fahrenheit 451, the bookseller's nightmare! I won't pretend that there aren't books that I have wanted to burn in my lifetime as a bookseller, whether because they were really bad books or because they had been on my shelves way too long. But, I was somewhat distressed by the article last month on the dealer who was burning excess books. I understand why he felt he had to do it, but I think there are other options. As a book dealer myself, with tons of books that I would love to see go away, I thought maybe I should do a bit of research on places we booksellers could donate our excess books. As it turns out, there are many, many great organizations in place, here and overseas, that want a lot of our old books. I'll tell you about a few of them.

A couple of years ago, after our trip to Costa Rica, I sent three boxes of books to a lending library in San Jose, C.R. They appreciated them greatly and the postage was not too bad. However, with the ludicrous new overseas postage costs that just went into effect, we would need to take into consideration whether an organization will pay for all or part of the postage or not. Here are a few of the places I located. From my viewpoint, though I am a small, not terribly profitable bookstore, if I have to pay some postage to give some of these good, but unsaleable books to people who really, really need them, I will pay the postage and call it a donation for my taxes.

Let's start with Books for Soldiers, since we are talking about the men and women who are laying their lives on the line every day in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other parts of the world. Whether or not you agree with the war, it is nice to know that you can do something for those brave folks. I emailed the organization and got a letter back immediately. "I'm one of the moderators at Books for Soldiers. We're so glad you've found us!"

They offer a couple of ways to become involved. One choice is to invite booksellers to join them at Books for Soldiers. It's a free, but somewhat time consuming, process. First, you would have to get an account with www.booksforsoliders.com. Then, you send in a notarized application. After the application has been processed (2-4 weeks), you will become "Official Volunteers" and have access to a variety of troop addresses.

Wait! Don't Burn that Book, Donate It

- By Karen Wright

none

This is such typical, annoying, bureaucratic, government red tape that it makes me want to scream, but probably a very worthwhile place to send your excess books, and I think, but am not sure, they pay postage, or the recipient does.

This group also has another option. One can register on their site, and then offer books in their "We Have Books" forum. These books have to be listed by title. Then military personnel who come to their website can view the titles and send their requests and addresses directly to the bookseller. For more info on these folks, go to their website, booksforsoldiers.com.

Many libraries will still accept books. They are really picky about what books they take and often they will put donated books in their Friends of the Library sales. But, what the heck, it is better than tossing them in the land fill or burning them. Give your local library a call and find out what their needs are and what they will and won't accept. It goes without saying that they probably want clean books with no tears, stains, ex-lib marks, or pages missing, but most of us have those kinds of books anyway. You can find more on library donations at www.adoptalibrary.org.

Another excellent place to send your books is to American Indian Reservations. According to their website; "Statistics show that, over the course of an entire year, over 90% of tenth graders in reservation schools did not read a single book outside of the classroom." If you can send a book that jump-starts one kid into becoming a reader, then go for it. Many reservations accept donations of used books for their local reservation libraries. For further information and donation requirements, please contact the reservation of your choice. For a list of those, go to www.ncai.org/Tribal_Directory.3.0.html. They have a link on that website to a list of Native American K-12 schools.

I found two organizations that encourage you to send books to prisons, and there were more, I'm sure. The Prisoners' Reading Encouragement Project serves as a support organization to prison libraries and educational programs. They have donated more than 40,000 books to 23 New York State prisons. They support libraries and educational programs at ten New York State facilities. New and gently used books, audiotapes and videos are most often requested by their librarians and program counselors. In general, they cannot use books that are more than ten years old. Some prisons won't accept books from any place but a bookstore or an organization such as this one. For more information about donations contact Annette Johnson at Prisoners Reading Encouragement Project at info@prisonreader.org.

Wait! Don't Burn that Book, Donate It

- By Karen Wright

none

The Bookman.org in San Diego, California, has donated over one million books to local jails, provides books to homeless centers, senior centers, and teachers, and has given books to the needy in 37 foreign countries. For more information, visit www.TheBookman.org website. Many states have some sort of organization that collects books for prisoners, homeless shelters, and so on, so call around a bit and try to find those orphan books a home.

There are a number of groups that send books to foreign countries where they don't have books to throw away, as we do, but need them desperately. Bridge to Asia supplies books, journals, databases, and other educational materials that are essential to teaching and research but too costly for most developing countries to afford. They have sent about 6 million books to more than 1,000 schools in China in the past 16 years. Their Ministry of Education pays for book-shipping, various institutions donate staff and offices, and dozens of university librarians and support staff give their time to sort and distribute books to more than 600 universities in China. See them at www.bridge.org.

Here is my favorite! If I knew one of my books was being toted across the desert on a camel or a donkey, I would be jazzed. The Donkey Library is in Zimbabwe, the Camel Library operates from Kenya near the unstable border with Somalia. They started out in 1996 with three camels, taking books to the poorest and least educated of the poor, and now have 12 camels that travel to four settlements per day, four days per week. The camels and the librarian who rides them, bring the books to barefoot village schools, adults and children, sometimes laying the books out under a big tree, so the villagers can take their pick. They get to keep these precious books for two weeks. But the climate and moving is hard on the books and they need more books all the time. Children's storybooks in English and Swahili are the most popular, followed by general fiction and nonfiction for children and adults. The Book Aid International staff sorts and selects books and journals and packs cases of books ready for shipment to Kenya. BAI pays for all transport and freight of books from London to Nairobi Inland Container Depot or www.bookaid.org. You might want to find out about shipping from the U.S. You gotta see it to believe it so go to their website.

Wait! Don't Burn that Book, Donate It

- By Karen Wright

none

If you are on the west coast of the U.S., the Global Book Exchange in Novato, CA, collects and distributes donations of used texts and library books, but I'm sure they'd be delighted to have any good books. Their mission is to promote education and literacy worldwide. You can Go to their website at www.globalbookexchange.com or call Marilyn Nemzer at (415) 883-2665.

Rotary Club International also implements book projects in developing countries. In other countries that have indigenous Rotary Clubs and Rotary International will match funds for shipping. You can either call your local Rotary Club or call Rotary International (847) 866-3000.

The Brother's Brother Foundation distributes donated medical, educational, agricultural, and humanitarian response resources to people in need of them internationally. They have specific book donation programs such as Books Across the Sea, Jamaica Book Program, and Ghana Book Program. Give them a call at (412) 321-3160 or email at mail@brothersborother.org.

If that is not enough, try the non-profit, Books for the Barrios, which is dedicated to strengthening elementary school education in the Philippines. You can call them at (925) 687-7701 or email them at frantzic@usna.edu.

Then there is the American Chemical Society's Project Bookshare that collects chemistry textbooks and back numbers of journals from donors and makes these materials available to libraries in selected small U.S. colleges and to university libraries in mostly developing countries. These are books that are hard for us booksellers to get rid of, but when donated, they help improve the educations of chemists and chemical engineers in Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America. For more information, visit the Project Bookshare website.

I would also call your local school district office and ask them if there are any schools in your area that need books. Not just kiddie books, but also technical schools, community colleges, Magnet schools, and universities. I have teacher friends whose school districts are so poor that the teachers use some their own meager salaries to buy books for their kids. Check that out before you give up.

Wait! Don't Burn that Book, Donate It

- By Karen Wright

none

So, okay, you've tried one or all of these organizations, your thrift store locks the doors when it sees you coming, your local librarian runs screaming when she sees you with that box of useless books, and you still have books that need to go bye bye. Here are a couple of last resorts. They say on their website, Earth's 911: "If donation options are not available or your books are not usable, please consider recycling used books. Earth's 911 may help identify a local recycler for used books in your area. For recycling, pollution prevention, and other environmental information in the United States, Earth's 911 provides a comprehensive database of local recycling programs by ZIP code. For more information, visit the Earth's 911 website or call 1-800-CLEANUP."

And the last interesting organization that I found, though there are many more out there, is www.bookrecycler.org. You need to belong to or be a part of a nonprofit organization to use this and no, just because your bookstore is not profitable that does not make you a nonprofit organization! This is a way for non-profit organizations to sell books. The bookrecycler.org system finds books in your inventory for which they already have a buyer waiting. They say that; "When a desired book is located in your inventory, you are given a price quote representing a resale value of that book. The price quote is the amount a buyer has already committed to pay for that particular book. In many cases, the price quote is much more than the amount the book would be priced for sale in a public sale. You have the option to send the book to bookrecycler.org for immediate sale, or to leave it in your inventory for sale at the nonprofit bookstore or in a public sale. Again, the advantage of using bookrecycler.org is immediate sale, 24/7, at a higher resale price."

I guess my point is that though we are all drowning in old books we cannot sell in our stores or online, there are lots of ways to see those books into the hands of people who want, need them, and would love them; they deserve the chance to give them a home.