I haven't blogged for a while. First, because I was in Minnesota doing Halloween and that was covered by other bloggers better than I could do it. Second, because since I got back.... I just haven't had time.
I've spent a lot of hours this week preparing for the Friends of the Library Book Sale. This was a small sale, our big ones are 3 days long in June and July. People donate books all year long and twice a month we sort them into boxes. I cream off the best ones to maintain a cart of books in the library proper where we sell the best books all year long. The others are stored until the sales.
At today's sale, we had a lot of kids books, and a year's worth of donated Christmas books, music and videos, plus we featured like-new books for Christmas gifts. We made $500+ in 4 hours, selling books at 50 cents for paperbacks and $1 for hard-cover. Plus, we had some of the best ones for $2.
I pulled out what I considered the very best ones at the end and replenished my cart and a second cart by the kid's library. Lots of great kids books. I wish I'd had this as a resource when the kids were younger. I would have been great to buy books for them at these prices.
I brought home 3 books for only $1.50. Of course, that means I'll get rid of 15 books - that's the rule the Geezer and I have now, 5 go out for every one that comes in. What did I bring back? Home: a short history of an idea by Witold Rybczynski, an architect who has written a lot of interesting stuff; Entertaining Satan: witchcraft and the culture of early New England by John Demos; and a mystery by a man, but it sounded interesting anyway, so I broke my rule about only reading fiction by women.
It was lovely to be around books again even for a few hours.
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3 comments:
I looked at what Barnes and Noble said about that "HOME" book, and if you are willing, I'd love to have it when you are done, it looks quite interesting.
Welcome back, the Bride. We've missed you!
I know this is annoying to mention, but if you had charged $1.00 per paperback and $2.00 for hardcovers, and $4.00 for the best stuff, you would have made twice the money, and your customers would still have received the best book value in the USA.
Yes, Kate, of course, that makes sense, except there is a lot of resistance to doing it. Lots of people involved, many of whom feel that if we charged more, we'd sell less. It's complex in the way that voluntary organizations are complex.
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