Why Does Give My Books Network Resell Used Books in Boston?

Resale is what makes the free pickup free. Boston donors are charged nothing, and the Local Pick-Up Partner who collects your boxes earns a living by reselling the portion of each pickup that has resale value.

No fee at the door means the money has to come from somewhere. It comes from a used paperback finding a buyer for two dollars. Nobody is hiding that, because a service that will not explain its own economics does not deserve your books.

Is a Donation Still a Donation If Books Get Resold?

Yes. A donation to Give My Books Network is still a donation, even when part of it is resold: the books leave your stoop for free, and they continue their journey instead of being sent to a landfill.

What resale is not: a secret, a bait-and-switch, or a reason to feel used. Every box that leaves a Jamaica Plain triple-decker is a box that did not sit in a damp basement until it molded. Some of those books find readers through the Give ME Books program. Some find readers on a two-dollar shelf. Both are readers.

What Share of Donated Books Gets Resold?

No fixed share exists, and any number you are quoted should make you suspicious. Every pickup is different: a box of current paperbacks and a box of 1970s book club editions do not sort the same way.

Local Pick-Up Partners sort everything offsite after collection. Many items are redistributed through the Give ME Books program to schools, libraries, nonprofits, literacy programs, senior centers, and after-school tutoring. Others go to resale. Items that cannot be reused may eventually be recycled, as a last resort rather than a default.

Nobody will hand you a percentage, because nobody honestly knows it before the box is opened.

Where Do Resold Books Go in Boston?

Resold books re-enter Boston's reading life through used book stores, community book sales, church basements, flea markets, and online listings. Local Pick-Up Partners are family businesses, and most of them sell where they live.

Walk Centre Street through Jamaica Plain and Roslindale and the whole ecosystem is right there: a cart of dollar paperbacks outside a shop, a card table at a church fair, a sidewalk sale on a bright Saturday in October. A paperback collected in Roslindale in September may well be read in Roslindale by November, though nothing about that route is fixed and no partner will pretend otherwise.

September 1 and the Boston Curb Pile

Boston's citywide lease turnover on September 1 sends thousands of books to the curb in a single day. Jamaica Plain, Allston, Brighton, Mission Hill: sidewalks fill with milk crates of paperbacks, and rain usually finds them by Tuesday.

A book on a wet sidewalk has one destination. A book in a covered box on the back porch, scheduled for pickup, has several. Resale is one of them, and it is the one that keeps the pickup free for the next person moving out on Centre Street.

How Boston Donors Keep Partners Honest

Every pickup ends with a 3-click review, and those public ratings follow the Local Pick-Up Partner. Partners who arrive in the window and treat the books with respect earn a Top Giver badge and better placement.

Accountability is the other half of the honesty. A network that resells books has to be reviewable, or resale becomes the only thing anyone believes about it. The Book Donation Programs guide from the American Library Association makes the same point about donation programs in general: understand what happens to the material before you hand it over.

What a Boston Pickup Costs, and What You Do Not Get

Nothing, and no tax receipt. Give My Books Network charges no pickup fee, no per-box charge, and no minimum, but Give My Books Network and its Local Pick-Up Partners are family businesses rather than 501(c)(3) nonprofits, so no tax-deduction form is issued.

• Free: no pickup fee, no per-box charge, no minimum quantity.
• No sorting: hardcovers, paperbacks, CDs, and DVDs ride in the same box.
• No tax receipt: family businesses, not 501(c)(3) nonprofits.
• You pack: the partner does not bring boxes and does not carry items down from an apartment.
• You need not be home: the window runs 8 AM to 8 PM.