Real Words

I used to have an entire living room filled with books. Hundreds of books. And then it came time to move to a smaller place and I realized what many people realize when they move – books are heavy! I also realized that it was completely unnecessary to keep books laying around that I really wasn’t going to read ever again. And that caused me to further realize that it was really unnecessary to purchase most of the books that I bought.

At that time, I sold off most of my books, gave a bunch of the rest away and kept only the few that I really do read again now and then. I started getting all of my books from the local library and returning them when my three weeks were up. But somehow, I slowly gained a new collection of books.

It’s something that happens as a writer. People give me books as gifts (and I’m not complaining about that because I almost always love the books that other people pick out for me). And, over time, I started seeing a book here or there in the store that I’d buy on impulse since I didn’t want to wait to order it from the local library. So I ended up with a new stack of books. And since I’ve been de-cluttering my whole house lately, I decided that it was time to get rid of these books.

For the most part, I listed them on Amazon for sale and got rid of them quickly. I was able to get a little bit of money back and to give discounted books to others who wanted them. But there are some books I have that just aren’t worth selling on Amazon because they don’t have a lot of value – the cost of shipping would be more than its worth to get rid of the book.

Trying to figure out what to do about this, I stumbled across several online sites where people trade books. You list the books that you have available and people can order them from you at no charge. You pay shipping but you can send them media mail so it’s only about $2. You get rid of the book. In exchange, you get credits on the site which means that you can then order new books at no cost.

At first, I didn’t think that this was something that I wanted to do since the entire purpose of getting rid of my books was to clear up the space they were taking up in my home. But then I started thinking about the fact that there are certain books that I do want to refer to again and again. Books filled with writing exercises, creativity lessons and DIY projects are books that it makes more sense to keep than to keep trying to get from the library again and again.

So, I listed a bunch of my books on one of the Paperback Swap sites (which, incidentally, takes more than just paperbacks) and I started getting rid of them. Now I have credits on the site that let me get those books that are actually valuable to me to keep around. It’s a really great program. And since most of the writers I know are readers who have way too many books, I think it’s something that would be valuable for a lot of the people that I know to look into!