Affordable Books

Find quality used books at community-friendly prices.

Community Book Sales

Regular sales events bringing affordable reading to your neighborhood.

Wide Selection

Books, textbooks, CDs, DVDs, and other media available.

Support Local Literacy

Proceeds from sales support literacy programs in your community.

Donate for Future Sales

Schedule a free pickup - your donated books fuel future community sales.

Eco-Friendly

Keep books out of landfills and in the hands of readers.

Quick answer: Give My Books Network is not a used book store in Chicago, and it has no storefront to browse. Local Pick-Up Partners collect donated books free from your doorstep, sort them offsite, redistribute many through the Give ME Books program, and resell some, which is what keeps the pickup free.

Where Do Used Book Stores in Chicago Get Their Books?

Used book stores in Chicago are supplied almost entirely by neighbors clearing shelves. New bookshops order from distributors; used bookshops cannot. Every book on a used shelf arrived because someone in this city decided to pass it forward.

Usually it is a move, a downsize, an estate, or a kid who outgrew the middle-grade section. The supply is local and voluntary, which is why the independent shops around 57th Street and up in Andersonville look the way they do. They are a portrait of what the neighborhood has been reading for forty years.

When the donations thin out, the shelves thin out with them.

Is Give My Books Network a Used Book Store?

Give My Books Network is not a used book store: there is no storefront, no counter and no hours painted on a door, only Local Pick-Up Partners collecting donated books from Chicago doorsteps.

What happens next is the part that touches the used-book world. Many items are redistributed to readers, schools, libraries, nonprofits and organizations that request books through the Give ME Books program. Some are resold by the partner, through used book stores, community sales and online listings, to help sustain the free pickup service. Items that cannot be reused may eventually be recycled as a last resort.

So a box left in a Hyde Park vestibule in March can become three things at once. A book on a shop shelf. A book in a classroom. And a free pickup for the next person who asks for one.

What Moves on a Used Shelf and What Sits

A used book buyer judges a carton on two things: condition first, then demand. Watching one work is fast and slightly brutal.

• Goes straight to the shelf: hardcovers with jackets intact, current-edition textbooks, art and photography titles, cookbooks, local history, well-kept literary fiction.
• Does not: water-stained paperbacks, books with missing pages, the eleventh copy of last decade's bestseller.

None of which means the rest is worthless. It means the rest belongs somewhere other than a retail shelf, and that is precisely what the Give ME Books program exists for.

Should You Pull the Good Ones Out First?

Pack the box mixed rather than pulling out the titles you think are valuable, because people misjudge value in both directions and a mixed box sorts faster offsite than a curated one.

You pack the books, since a Local Pick-Up Partner does not bring boxes. Boxes or sturdy bags, well packed and not too heavy. Set them out starting at 8 AM in a dry spot, not on an open stoop in March slush. The window runs 8 AM to 8 PM and you do not need to be home.

Where Else Chicago Sells Used Books Cheaply

Chicago's used-book world is deeper than the shops alone. Library branch sales, school fundraisers, church basement tables and community sales run most of the year and price paperbacks in coins.

Those sales get their books exactly the way the shops do, from neighbors clearing shelves. The American Library Association's overview of book donation programs is a useful map of how donated books travel through libraries and nonprofits before they ever reach a table.

Keeping Chicago's Shelves Full

Give My Books Network has redistributed more than 200,000 books since 2008, and every one of them started as a box somebody packed. Books sitting in an Andersonville closet are books nobody can shelve.

If a partner serves your ZIP code, you can book a service day instantly. If not, your request enters the out-of-area pickup system, where nearby partners may claim it. Every pickup ends with a 3-click review, which is how partners build a public rating and eventually earn a Top Giver badge.

Pack what you have, set it out, schedule the pickup, done.

Pickup Request Form

Enter your ZIP code to begin your pickup request