Where Are the Cheapest Used Books in Chicago?

The cheapest used books in Chicago are not in the shops. They are on folding tables in church basements, park district field houses, library meeting rooms and school gyms, priced by a volunteer with a cash box on a card table.

Around Pilsen and Little Village those sales tend to be bilingual by default, and Spanish-language children's books usually clear the table before anything else does. Walk 18th Street on a Saturday in spring and you will find at least one, often without a flyer.

The shops are good and they should exist. They are also retail.

What Does a Used Book Actually Cost at a Chicago Sale?

Most books at a Chicago community sale cost between a quarter and three dollars, and end-of-day bag prices go lower still.

• Mass-market paperbacks: frequently a quarter to fifty cents
• Trade paperbacks and children's chapter books: often a dollar or two
• Hardcover fiction: usually two or three dollars
• Picture books and board books: often the cheapest table in the room
• DVDs, CDs, audiobooks and puzzles: commonly a dollar

A grocery bag stuffed for five dollars in the last hour is a real thing, and it happens more often than it is advertised.

How to Shop a Chicago Book Sale Well

Go early for selection and late for price. Bring your own bag, because a field house is not going to hand you one, and bring small bills, because a volunteer running a cash box in a church basement will quietly thank you.

Scan the low shelves and the bottom of the box first, since everybody else is scanning at eye level. If you are furnishing a classroom or a kid's shelf, ask whether there is a bag price. There usually is. It is usually not on the sign.

What You Will Not Find, and Why

First editions and rare finds are not on these tables. Anything obviously valuable gets pulled before the doors open, and that is fine, because the money it raises funds the program the sale exists to support.

What you will find instead is depth: full runs of a series, cookbooks nobody prints anymore, the reference shelf someone's grandfather kept for forty years. That is the real reward of a low-cost sale, and it is not something a retail shop can offer you.

Where Do the Books on Those Tables Come From?

Every book on a Chicago sale table was donated by a neighbor, and Give My Books Network is one of the routes those donations travel.

Local Pick-Up Partners, locally owned and family-operated, collect donated books and media from doorsteps across the city and sort everything offsite. Many items are redistributed to readers, schools, libraries, nonprofits and organizations that request books through the Give ME Books program, which is how a lot of them reach a folding table in the first place. Some are resold by the partner to help sustain the free pickup service. Items that cannot be reused may eventually be recycled as a last resort. The American Library Association's book donation resource explains how libraries and nonprofits typically route donated books toward sales like these.

If You Run a Program That Needs Books

Schools, after-school tutoring programs, ESL classrooms, senior centers, shelters and community centers can request books directly through the Give ME Books program run by Give My Books Network. A field house reading corner that needs forty picture books does not need a budget line.

It needs a request.

And If You Have Books Going the Other Direction

Most people who shop these sales eventually own more books than shelf, and Give My Books Network collects the overflow free from your Chicago doorstep. You pack the boxes; a Local Pick-Up Partner does not bring boxes.

Pack books and media into boxes or bags that are well packed and not too heavy. Set them out starting at 8 AM in a dry spot, since a wet Chicago morning will turn cardboard into mush faster than you would believe. The pickup window runs 8 AM to 8 PM and you do not need to be home.

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.

Buy cheap, read hard, pass them forward.